


Loyalty Lies

by Kat_in_the_Hat



Series: The Lúmë Saga [1]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dwalin Is A Softie, F/M, It needs to die, M/M, Modern Character in Middle Earth, Modern Girl in Middle Earth, Screw the Chosen One Trope, Slow Burn, we'll get there when we get there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2018-12-17 04:34:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11844042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_in_the_Hat/pseuds/Kat_in_the_Hat
Summary: I raged, screamed up at the stars as they twinkled mockingly down at me. My voice rose to such a pitch that back home I would have worried for the safety of Grams' china. But wasn't home was I? If there was a god listening, they certainly got an earful. I insulted their mother quite a bit.* * * * * *After landing herself in Arda, Tasha discovers her old life of petty crime and bad decisions won't save her in her training to become a new Vala.Rating currently for language and graphic violence, but possible lemons later :)





	1. Sweet Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The majority of these characters are of our lord Tolkien's creating. *bows* I own nothing. Please leave comments and kudos as you wish. :)
> 
> This fic is currently in the middle of a rewrite, but no plot points are being changed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dwalin’s POV

**PART ONE**

[O Euchari](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks7E-8vNPj0)

**25 March T.A. 2941**

 

 _Where in the name of the Valar am I?_

I stood in a [polished marble pavilion](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700941286/) so filled with flora if it had not been for the [glass windows](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700941160/) and stone ceiling I would have believed myself to be outdoors. The sound of moving water tinkled and I was startled to realize there was water all around me; falling down the columns in vertical sheets into grooves in the floor, only to run into [shallow pools](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/94716398383022736/) that bore forth even more plant life.

 _Looks like one of those tree-hugger’s halls._ I ignored the tranquility the scene brought me. No good could come from elves. The wet heat of the room’s air was a choking force, so I removed my furs and leathers, allowing the cool breeze shifting through the air on occasion to flow over me.

“Adad! Adad!” A chorus of small voices rang out and suddenly I found myself being attacked by two small dwarflings doing convincing impressions of barnacles. “Tell us a story Adad! Please! Please! Please!”

No longer in control of my limbs, I reached down and stroked my hands through their red curls before lifting them both into my arms. With their little impish smiles beaming up at me, it did not occur to me that anything was amiss; that they had called me father. Nor did it come to mind that I had no idea how I’d come to be in this place, let alone that I did not know these wee ones. I simply began a story I’d told many times before to Kili and Fili about the heroes of old who fought the forces of evil and darkness.

We must have walked for an hour. No, _I_ walked. They alternated between lounging in my arms and scrambling onto my shoulders and back like little monkey children; unable to contain their need for movement for longer than a few minutes at a time.

When we had circled the glass hall a few time, I sat us down on a plant bed to finish my tale, the two bairns enraptured enough to hold still. Admittedly, I fed off their attention, lowering my voice to tell of the Seven Fathers and the making of dwarf-kind with a dramatic flare reminiscent of Kíli.

Clapping sounded and only then did I notice a woman waded into the [pool](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700941159/) behind us, mostly hidden by the bushes and small fruit trees at the water’s edge. The [human](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/341007003013553933/) looked at the two bairns with such amusement and warmth that when she looked up at me with the same, I couldn’t bare to ask what was happening. I could only stared.

“Mama, Adad’s story was _so good_ did you here it mama? Did you hear, did you, did you…” the two small ones’ voices converging over each other till neither was intelligible. She simply stepped from the water with a smile on her lovely face and caressed their heads as they rushed to her sides and clung to her dress. I would only realize later that it was Durin blue.

“I was a very good story,” she agreed. “Why don’t you find something to eat in the kitchen, hmm? I think I remember someone saying something about rhubarb pie!” I had no idea was a rhubarb was, but based on the gasps from the two blue eyed babes, it must have been tasty indeed.

In a flash, off they zoomed out the far end of the hot house with squeals of excitement. The redhead in blue turned to me with a smile.

She opened her mouth as though to say something, but suddenly the light in the room dimmed, as though the sun had gone behind clouds. My eyes became clouded and all I saw before my vision went black was her freckled face leaning close as she placed her hands on my cheeks.

I woke with a shiver down my spine. _What the ever-living Mahal was that?_


	2. Nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tasha's POV

[Lux Aeterna](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc3Cq89P97Y)

I sat bolt upright, head foggy. _Fuck. Where the am I?_

Fleur East was still blasting through my earbuds about how she loves men who play the saxophone, so not much time had passed, but I wasn’t anywhere near where I last remembered. I had been walking to Grams' right?

It wasn’t even daytime anymore.

The only light in the small circle of trees emanated from the happily crackling [campfire](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/478648266618431677/) a few yards to my left.

 _Shit!_ I stood up like I’d been struck by lightning, my earbuds dropping out of my ears of their own accord, as I wheeled around for someone; anyone. There was a dark bundle laid down on the other side of the fire. I grabbed a stick near me and silently crept toward the dark mass, half hoping and half fearing that it was another human being. I held the stick out as far as possible and gave the figure one sharp poke, enough to wake up anyone. The blob had too much give to be a person. Moving closer I could see it was a hiking backpack.

As I leaned forward in a crouch to open the pack, water drops plopped into the material and I looked up, expecting rain. Belatedly, I realized I was crying, sobbing really. My whole body was shaking from something other than cold. _Is this shock? Can’t shock kill you?_ I had no idea, so I scooted closer to the fire and tucked myself into a ball on my side until the panic subsided a little and my teeth stopped chattering.

I’m not sure how long I lay there, wishing myself home like Dorothy Gale. I may have clicked my heels together just to make sure. When I finally opened my scrunched up eyes again, there was a piece of folded paper stood up next to the pack that I could’ve sworn hadn’t been there before. I snatched it up before it blew away in the breeze.

It was white card stock, folded with just two typed words.

 

“ _Good luck_ ”


	3. Delirium

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Back again. I'm hoping to keep a schedule of a chapter per weekend, but we'll see how well that works out.

[Dreamscape](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90xoq5JbXBU)

I was never one to throw a tantrum. Yes, I cursed like a sailor but I was twenty-two and had been in juvie for a few of my formative years, so really who could blame me? Generally it was usually more for comic effect than genuine offense, and I definitely knew how to turn it off in front of Grams. That woman could whoop ass with the best of them. And I rarely raised my voice. I’d learned a long time ago, the scariest people didn’t use their words all that much.

It’s funny how waking up in the middle of nowhere without any idea of how you got there can make you do things that are wildly out of character.

The string of curses that came out of my mouth would have made Samuel L. Jackson blush. I think I made up a few. I raged, screamed up at the stars as they just twinkled mockingly down at me. My voice rose to such a pitch that were I back home would have made me worry for the safety of Gram’s china. _But I’m not fucking home am I?_ If there was a god listening, they certainly got an earful. I insulted their mother quite a bit.

When I finally had to take a breath, I heard a tinny sound from across the fire that made me freeze. _My phone! Oh, I’m such a fucking meatball!_

I made a mad dash around the fire to grab my phone from where I’d dropped it when I first stood. I tripped over a rock in my rush, but barely felt the impact on my knees and forearms before I was scrambling back up.

No signal. _Shit. Stay cool and think logically. Make a plan. Always make a plan._

Taking one last look around where I’d first woken up I worked my way around the outside of the circle of trees in ever shrinking circles to make sure I hadn’t missed anything on the ground in the dark. Seeing nothing else, I decided to break into the mystery pack.

Admittedly I’d never been much of an outdoorsmen. _Outdoorswoman?_ Either way, I knew enough to know what a hiking pack looked like. It was a deep blue, slash proof, and 65 liters according to the tag stitched on the strap. That seemed a little heavy until I tried to pick it up and found it to be incredibly light. Had these sadistic bastards only left me a sleeping bag? _No, even that would be heavier than the few pounds the pack left like; a towel maybe?_

I slowly emptied everything out of the multiple segments of the pack and smaller outside pockets and found a frankly astounding amount of shit jam-packed into this thing. Laying out everything in the light of the fire, I was completely baffled by how lightweight the pack had been.

I’d found a bound journal and pen in a side compartment and I was about to make a list of all my supplies when I noticed my sleeve. More correctly, someone else’s sleeve because this was not my _fucking_ shirt.

Yet again I found myself hopping up like I’d electrocuted, but this time I was looking down at myself. _These are not my fucking clothes!_ I began taking off my clothes to see if anything else was different.

Finally in the nude, I examined myself, feeling around my groin and thighs. Nothing felt sore or tender. If I’d been unconscious would I have even felt anything? Was a muscle designed to push a tiny human out resilient enough to not show signs of assault? Probably, which wasn’t extremely helpful at the moment. There weren’t any bruises on my thighs, but then if I were unconscious there probably wouldn’t have been. Searching for new cuts or signs of a struggle I couldn’t recall, I fished out the compact I’d found in the pack and examined myself as thoroughly as possible in the dim lighting.

The cut I’d made on my ankle this morning while shaving still looked very fresh, so whoever they were must have only knocked me out for a few hours and dumped me here after dark. I checked my scalp for any signs of a cut or bruise from being hit, but there were none. I began checking the rest of my body for possible injection sites but couldn’t find one. _How did they knock me out?_ It was like I’d just fallen asleep and…what? Hadn’t noticed them changing my clothes and dropping me off in the middle of the forest? Assuming that’s all that had happened. I shuddered. No use thinking about something that might have never happened. _Move on._

 _And now I’m naked in a field angling a mirror to look at my vagina, thinking of all the ways I could have inhaled or ingested a sedative. Fabulous._ I guessed anything was possible. I was also weirdly clean too, like I’d just taken a shower and but my hair wasn’t damp and it took a long time to dry on its own. So over an hour ago…or they blow-dried my hair… again, gross.

I carefully inspected each article of clothes, holding it up to the light to see if there was anything of interest; first the underwear and sports bra, then the weird leather-patched leggings and flannel, finally the socks and steel-toed boots. I thought maybe they’d put a tracker on me somewhere, like some kind of grotesque game of cat and mouse, but I didn’t find anything except that all the clothes were perfectly my size and looked brand new. So did the pack and everything in it. Someone had spent a lot of time, energy, and money to play this creepy prank on me.

 _That’s right, Tasha, keep calling it a prank. Maybe that’ll negate the fact that they’ve kidnapped you, changed your clothes, possibly violated you, and dumped you in the wilderness._ It was possible a disgruntled customer had done this, but I cast my memory back and couldn’t think of a single person I’d either worked for or turned down a job from that’d do something like this. Kill me and dump the body, sure, but this whole set up with the pack and the fire screamed of guilt. The thought of a cat and mouse game came back.

Once again fully dressed, I lumbered back to the small mountain of shit I’d dumped from the pack before, already starting to feel exhaustion creeping in as the adrenaline left my body. Shaking myself slightly more awake, I decided I needed to sort and repack it all before tomorrow in case I needed to leave in a hurry. After all, I had no idea what kind of animals lived in these woods. I wasn’t even sure which woods these were, though by my estimate I’d only been unconscious for a few hours so they couldn’t have taken me farther than out of New York State. And I was still stuck on the mystery of the bizarrely light pack as well. Everything seemed the appropriate weight individually, but every time I put something into the pack it didn’t seem to change weight. _Damn I need sleep; I’m losing my shit. Okay, just make the list and repack and you can pass out for a little._ I was still keeping my stick from before next to me so if my kidnappers decided to come back I could have the pleasure of beating them to death.

I retrieved the notebook and pen to write out my list of supplies, including what I was currently wearing: the notebook and pen, the pack itself containing two days worth of clothes that looked pretty sturdy, my earbuds and phone that was already on 20%, a water proof jack that wasn’t very thick but surprisingly warm, steel toed boots, a little Swiss army knife, some Paracord, a compass that actually looked survivalist grade, a first aid kit with a decent amount of pills and various doodads I’d have to read the instructions to know the use of, and a pretty basic hygiene travel kit that I could probably stretch to several weeks if I rarely washed. Given the lack of running water I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to wash at all. At the bottom of the pack sat several bricks of what looked like saran wrapped crackers but their label identified them as nonperishable rations. A sleeping back was strapped onto the bottom of the bag and a full water bottle was stuck in the mesh side pouch. I finished the list and then included the page in my hand as the “Note from The Fucker Who I’m Going to Mutilate.” I tucked it into the notebook and sat back to think.

My lock-picking set was gone, as were my handcuff key and razor blade that I usually kept in my boots. I was trying to figure out how in the hell I was going to replace them when I noticed a little velvet drawstring bag I’d missed in the darkness before. Inside I found [two rings](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/429460514439284290/); my parent’s wedding bands. _They were in Grams’ house._ There was no way someone had snuck into the house, stolen these, and she hadn’t tried to stop them. I just prayed they’d left her alive.


	4. Pursuit

[Waiting Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsFelA4WtIY)

To say that I slept well would be a lie. I may have had a fire and a sleeping bag, but I was also supremely aware that I was virtually helpless. I had gotten into a few scrapes throughout my life and hung out at the local boxing gym when I’d dated one of the managers there but I had no background in wilderness training at all. As far as I was concerned, anything could come along and eat me at any time. Every sound had me sitting up almost violently, and when I was actually able to doze, it was in a tight ball clutching that velvet bag to my chest for comfort it couldn’t give.

When the first beams of light rose from the far side of the fire, it was more a relief than anything. I hoped that moving would release some of the tension. The Bastard, as I’d now labeled them, hadn’t returned so I probably wasn’t going to get any answers from my kidnapper and I still didn’t have service.

The forest woke up as I did but I didn’t feel any better in the light of day, probably because the trees made me feel infinitesimal. Not quite as tall as I’d heard [Redwoods](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700942469/) could be, but close, the trees dwarfed even the other plant life and left the forest floor dim in the shadow of their expanse. I thought they were oaks but, on closer inspection, their leaves were teardrop shaped and the bark was almost [purple](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700941290/), making for bizarre, bruise-like designs.

I’d heard once that if you followed running water downstream for long enough you’d find civilization or at least a body of water but as there was stream within sight or hearing distance I simply walked north. _Thank you handy dandy compass left for me by a sadist from the 9 th circle of hell._ North I went, walking almost perpendicular to the sun rising in the west, which was…very wrong but I figured a broken compass was better than no compass.

And so I walked. And I walked some more. [There was a lot of walking.](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700949149/) My guilt and anxiety over Grams began mixing with intense boredom. There was no guarantee she wasn’t injured or dead, and here I was stuck in bumble-fuck nowhere. Normally on a walk through the city or on the subway I would have put in my headphones and zoned out, but as I was in the middle of nowhere I decided hearing any signs of oncoming danger beat staving off the boredom.

I was growing more and more aggressive toward the growing number of roots and rocks in my path when I heard a whisper behind me. I whirl around to…nothing. More whispering sounded and this time I could tell it was just the leaves in the wind accompanied by the groans and strain of tree limbs, but I _swore_ it almost sounded human. Shaking my head I continued on while the almost whispering got louder and louder. I began thinking I should find a place to settle in for a rainstorm when a sound split through the air of the suddenly silent forest.

A growl. The growl of something really fucking big.

A frozen moment of shock followed and then I was running. Another growl sounded behind me accompanied by several higher yelps. _Wolves are definitely not how I thought I’d go._

There was no thought for a while, just breathing and muscles straining to accommodate my sudden sprint. I could hear them gaining and this race was going to end very quickly if I didn’t think fast. They must have been pretty far off if it had taken this long for them to catch up. The adrenaline made what must have only been a few minutes seem like an hour.

 _There!_ A willow tree larger than all the others thankfully had some lower hanging branches I could grab on to. I’d never had much upper body strength, but it’s really quite astounding what adrenaline allows the human body to do. Suddenly, like the most intense game of The Floor is Lava, I found myself about 15 feet up a tree with very little memory of climbing at all just as a monster came into view.

How I’d managed to outrun that thing I had no idea until two smaller mini-monsters came into view as well. The yelping hadn’t been a pack of wolves but this monstrosity’s babies, the size of small dogs. _So that’s how I outran mommy-dearest. She was waiting for them to catch up and I’m their dinner._ Then she began to stalk her prey.

I may have been up a tree, but [Momma Monster](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/461970874260697792/) didn’t seem perturbed by this fact at all. I was scared stiff, but as I scrambled farther up the willow to stay well out of lunging distance my mind kept coming back to ‘ _what the fuck are they?’_ Not wolves, she was much too big, closer the size of a horse than that a house pet. This was something out of a horror movie where toxic waste turned normal animals into mutants. There was no way this thing was a normal occurrence or it would have been part of every scary story ever told around a campfire.

“ _Higher!_ ” I whipped around; almost falling off my branch at the near human whisper went up in the trees behind me like a chant repeated by thousands. There was no time to ruminate on what was clearly a psychotic break though because Momma still hadn’t given up.

The black monstrosity paced back and forth, making a show of eyeing me. She seemed to be deciding the best way to proceed when suddenly she took a bounding leap at lightning speed and suddenly I knew I should have moved much farther up the willow. The ease with which she reached me was offensive, really. I was going to die.

I flinched back and closed my eyes in preparation for the jaws that were about to snap around me when the world began to shake and move, accompanied by a loud groan and crack. The world was still moving but I wasn’t in pain. _Am I dead already?_ A whine sounded from below and I finally had the courage to open my eyes to… carnage. Momma Warg was flattened, along with one of her offspring, and the scene was not lacking in blood.

The world wasn’t moving, the [tree](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/157133474468838965/) was.

Never have I moved so fast; not when Momma Monster and her spawn were chasing me, not when I’d first woken up, and never before in my life of thieving for hire had I _ever_ moved so fast. The tree had moved! I had seen it! The tree had flattened a fucking monster, her skull and chest concaved, and the baby behind her was just a bloodily smeared pancake. If it did that to something that tried to claw its way up its trunk, what the hell was it going to do to me?

Finally on solid ground again, I twisted my way out of its root system and picked up a stick to defend myself. Yes, I was aware that was going to be useless against this new opponent, but there was still Baby Monster #2 to deal with. The little thing was snuffling and crying around its mother and sibling and if it hadn’t just wanted to eat me I would have felt bad. _No! Stop it! It’s a demon baby! It is not cute._

And it wasn’t cute, it’s true, it was ugly as sin actually, but the sounds it was making were so pained and desperate and just then the branches started to move again and instinct took over. Before I could tell myself off, I was making a mad dash forward to snatch up the little critter before it could be crushed too. My backpedaling skills were not as fluid unfortunately, because a few steps found me flat on my back tripping over a root with Baby Monster tucked under one arm awkwardly.

I could tell the branches weren’t moving toward us now. The whole tree seemed to be turning, though I didn’t know what towards, until a face of knotted bark appeared. The unwinding of the branches stopped and Baby and me were faced with...a face.


	5. Oblivion

[Born to Be Wild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrpA30TP1GA)

Around and around we went, yet here we were back at the start. I’d turn and make a [mad dash](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700932332/) in what was absolutely the opposite direction as the Demon Willow Tree, but somehow in a few moments I found myself sprinting into the same clearing I started in. _Am I going in a circle? No, is it moving?_ But no the trees around it hadn’t changed and Momma Monster was still flat on my left. And the Demon Willow just seemed to watch Baby and I.

If all roads lead to Rome, then all directions lead to the willow tree. I tried turning left and dodging right, I tried running all the way around the tree and forward still. My last attempt was backwards for as long as possible until I took my eyes off it for a moment and suddenly I was back again.

 _Only I would die by animate tree._ An strange thought to have in what I was sure were my final moments, but it’s always good to know I would have gone out with a joke; even a sardonic one.

“What do you want?” I yelled, voice far higher than I’d intended. I was barely suppressing the [rising panic](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700956191/) and lump of in my throat. The only response was a groan that echoed through my bones.

“Hey doll! Merry doll! Ring a ding dong dillo!

Ring a dong! Hop along! Fa la la the willow!

Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!”

I tried to turn my head to see the source of the voice, suddenly feeling utterly relaxed and almost drunk. _What a strange way to go._ The world was starting to look a little crooked and suddenly I found myself staring at my arboreal nemesis from several feet lover than I had been before. _Grams is gonna kill me._

 

* * * * * *

[Lux Aurumque](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j2JRcC6wBs)

The [floating](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700834755/) went on for ages. There was no me, just everything all at once and then suddenly there wasn’t anything at all.

That was when the music began. As first just a single voice so soft I thought maybe it had been there all along and I’d just missed it. The voice multiplied and suddenly one was many, individual voices taking shape and telling me their stories. They told me who they were and who they’d been in a great wave, all so interwoven they couldn’t be separated. Their stories were terrible and wonderful in equal measure with more collective pain and joy than could ever be comprehensible; all so vibrantly alive it stole my breath.

When I finally thought to find myself again, I was drunk in the ecstasy of it. I saw lives lived and how small those pieces of time were in the perspective of [infinity](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700931119/), but I also saw the beauty of it. How easily broken that tentative grip to life was and how much more valuable it was for its fragility.

I floated some more, trying to find my voice to singing back, trying to share in equal measure, but they responded back that that was silly. Didn’t I know I had been singing back the whole time?

The return to my [body](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700834753/) was one nerve at a time, warmth spreading from my chest, out to the rest of me. Physical sensation came back first, then sound and finally sight.

Fire crackled somewhere close and I thought for a moment I might be back at last night’s camp before I realized I was on something softer than grass and packed dirt. Slowly I peeled my eyes open after an eternity and allowed them to adjust, confirming my suspicion that I was somewhere new. I lay on a cushioned settee by a brazier in the center of the largest [hall](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/500110733606572436/) I’d ever seen, barren of all other furniture except a thick carpet and the most exquisite tapestries.

Before I could even think to search for signs of life, I was immediately drawn to the nearest one. There were probably thousands of them, covering almost every inch of the fifty-foot high walls of cool stone. This particular one was smaller than most and depicted [two trees](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/3940718396083882/), one silver and one gold. The closer I moved, the better I could see the detail of each leaf and blade of grass and wondered at the skill required.

“You like them.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin. _How in the world did she sneak up on me?_ The woman stood only a few feet behind me.

I took a moment to collect myself before responding, “They’re beautiful.”

She moved forward to stand shoulder to shoulder with me, looking at the tapestry while I looked at her.

“Some are, some are not.” She shrugged slightly, like it was the obvious thing to say, then leaned forward to narrow her eyes slightly, at what I could only assume was an imperfection only she could see.

“You’re the artist, then.” It was not a question.

She seemed intrigued but not surprised. “And why would you say that?” She had a slight accent I couldn’t place.

“Only the creator could look at a piece like that and think, ‘meh, it could be better’.”

She barked out a surprised laugh, transforming a somewhat average face into an alarmingly beautiful one for just a moment. She schooled her features and she regained her former look of normalcy. It was a shocking transformation that before I may have brushed aside as a trick of the light, but now made me quite sure she wasn’t altogether human.

The more I looked at her the more convinced I became, though if I’d been asked I couldn’t have said why. She had a presence unlike anyone I had ever met, a gravity to her that was otherworldly, and at this point I’d seen far weirder thing in the last twenty-four hours.

“You have a sense of humor then. That is good.”

“I try. The last two days it’s been falling more into the category of gallows humor than anything else though,” I turned back to the tapestry. “But you know, after being kidnapped to the middle of nowhere, being chased, attacked, and then almost killed by a surprisingly mobile tree, to say nothing of that little existential, acid trip before waking up in a castle, can you really blame me?” I hadn’t realized I’d completely run out of air till I was forced to take a deep breath, my final words ringing in the dimly lit chamber. I didn’t move for a minute, looking forward and trying to blink away the tears. Her touch on my shoulder had me turning.

“Come sister, I have to show you something.” I didn’t have the remaining brainpower to question her title for me. She smiled and led me across the hall to another, even larger [tapestry](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/440015826067074442/) of a shockingly blond man fighting a winged monster seemingly made of fire, with only a sword. She pushed it aside though, to uncover a wooden door that she unlatched and gestured for me to follow. We did not speak as we walked. Hallway after [hallway](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/237142736604696078/) we passed through, all with equally high ceilings and my estimate of how many tapestries she’d made grew astronomically. I lost track of how many turns we made but eventually she pushed past another tapestry that looked more like an impressionist version of the yin yang symbol, and led me into a significantly smaller room filled with wooden and metal apparatuses I would have assumed were torture devices if not for the half woven fabrics on all of the dozen or so machines. She continued walking to the end of the room to stop at what I could only assume was a loom.

Only the bottom of the image was completed, but already I could see…me. At least I assumed it was meant to be me. A redheaded woman lying by a fire in the left corner, the same redhead being chased by monsters, and in the newest panel the same woman threatening a willow tree with a stick. _I knew I looked stupid!_ But the scene hadn’t been completed yet; there was what looked like a pair of yellow shoes taking shape behind ‘little me’. She stopped my hand from unconsciously reaching out to touch the fabric, and I felt a wave of intense warmth wash up my arm from where we’d made contact.

“Who are you?”

“I am your teacher and a friend. I will explain,” she gestured to the panel I had been examining, “when you are rested. But for now you have to awaken.”

“Wake up? I am awake!” _Have I lost my mind?_

“You are awake here, not there.” My face made my lack of amusement fairly obvious. “You will be taken good care of, child.”

“By who? Please I just want to go home,” I choked out. Before I could get my answer, she took my face in her hands and I was being sucked under [ice-cold water](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/301389400046191772/).

All the air left my lungs and suddenly I was breaking through the surface of consciousness and sat up all in a hurry, a cold sweat breaking out all over my body.

_What the ever-living fuck was that?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was doing some rereading and I realized that I had remembered the majority of Tom's songs incorrectly. Child-me memorized them all wrong, but now it's muscle memory and I can't stop myself y'all so there are going to be some minor changes to his usual lyrics to appease my inner child. I hope you like where this is going, hopefully somewhere you've not seen in other fanfics before. Leave comments and kudos please!


	6. Clarity

[Kaval Sviri](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRKQEvIfIv0)

“Oh my god, please kill me.”

“You’ve come an awfully long way to die over a headache, child.”

“Why is everyone _calling me that_?” I clutched at my pounding head as though brute force could keep it from feeling like an atomic bomb had been detonated behind my eyes. The annoyingly pretty blonde woman sitting next to me on the cot could wait.

“How then would you have me address you?” I groaned. Did she have to talk so loud?

“Tasha. Nice to meet ‘cha,” I stretched my right arm out of the bundle of blankets and self pity that I had become and gave her a flimsy handshake. She didn’t seem to know what to do with that. “Do you have any aspirin? I feel like I downed a bottle of scotch.”

“I have a pain reliever, yes.”

“Great. Awesome. Thanks,” I blindly took the cup she handed me and couldn’t bring myself to care what was in it. If it was poison that was fine, so long as it killed me quickly. It tasted foul, but it worked so I wasn’t going to ask the ingredients. When the pain finally subsided enough for me to open my eyes properly, I looked around and realized that I was yet again in a new place. I’d somehow wound up in this woman’s [house](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977104/), but it was more of a cabin with dirt packed floors and seemingly only two rooms, though they were packed with enough trinkets and furniture to fill a pull sized house. The cot I sat on was a bed of blankets and a straw mattress on the floor of the [main room](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977102/). I was stumbling out of the [shanty](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977023/) that was more tree than than man-made home and into the fading light of the forest before she could stop me.

“It was real. It wasn’t a dream. Was my dream even a dream? Who are you? Where am I? Answer me! What the actual fuck is going on!” Hysteria was not a familiar sensation for me, and I had a lifetime’s fill in the last two days. Of course, randomly waking up in an Alice Through the Looking Glass scenario wasn’t exactly a familiar sensation either, so I cut myself some slack.

“Are you well?”

“Am I well? Am I _well_? No! Tell me where I am and who you are right now or I swear I’ll brain you with…I don’t know what with, but I’ll _find something_!” She looked supremely unimpressed, like I was toddler throwing a hissy fit. I guess a woman a solid ten inches shorter than you is probably not super terrifying.

“How would you reach, child?” I whirled around; effectively losing the balance I’d just regained, to see a man with the loudest colored outfit I’d ever witnessed in my life.

“I don’t need jokes on my stature from the guy who chose to wear _that_!” His yellow boots and bright blue coat made for an alarming combination. He simply smiled merrily and gestured to a rock. I supposed I was meant to sit but I didn’t move, continuing to glare back and forth, effectively trapped between the both of them with the house at my back and a rock wall at my front.

“Tell me,” I growled, body tensing up for a fight.

Sighing, he lumbered over toward me, and I flinched back into the side of the house, expecting a blow, but he simply passed me to sit on the stump where he’d gestured. He sat himself down with a great gust of air, as old men do, muttering to himself, “where to begin, where to begin?”

“The beginning is generally best, my love,” replied the blonde to his rhetorical question as she came over to his side. He looked up from his perch with love in his eyes and suddenly I felt as though I was intruding and had to look away. I cleared my throat, reminding them of my presence. They didn’t look embarrassed, just amused when I let my eyes dart back to them.

“So little one, the beginning is where we’ll begin then? Ah yes, the beginning! So there was nothing at first yes? But then the Maker created life and…”

“Focus! We’re talking about the here and now! Where are we?” my anxiety was ratcheting up with every moment he wasted.

“Oh that is unimportant.”

“It really isn’t, though.” I turned to face the woman, “what is your name?”

“I am Goldberry and this,” she interrupted before he could begin talking again, “is my husband Tom.”

“Tom Bombadil!” he chirped like it was a compulsion. He nodded along happy as a clam. It would have been cute if I didn’t want to slap that smile off his face.

“And where is here?”

“Our home!” he chimed in unhelpfully! I deadpanned. “Our home in the Old Forest…in the northwest of Middle-earth…in Arda,” he stopped between each name like he was struggling for the terms. They both had accents, but now I realized her English was far better than his.

“Nothing you just said was helpful.”

“My dear,” Goldberry said, “we are nowhere in the world that you know.”

“Yeah, I got that I don’t know where in the world we are, that’s what I need for you to clear up for me! Where are we? Are we still even in New York State?”

She shook her head with sympathy in her eyes and I felt my heart and stomach sink in unison. “No dear, you misunderstand. We’re saying we’re nowhere in the _world_ that you know.” _Oh._

 

* * * * * *

[All Roads Lead to Rome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBUKlY0jvJk)

After Goldberry dropped that little bomb, she’d guided me to sit around afire off to the side of the house that I hadn’t even noticed. To be fair, I’d been a bit distracted.

I believed them. Maybe it was due to the absolutely impossible things I’d seen in the last day or maybe just because of the absolute sincerity in their words, but I absolutely believed them. It wasn’t that I’d been kidnapped by one of the many people I’d stolen from, all bad people to be sure; I’d be taken out of my world and dropped into another.

Grams would be having a fucking field day with all the sci-fi-esque implications. Was it another planet? Another dimension? An alternate reality? Were they the same thing? She’d debate out loud endlessly, and I’d be equally endlessly annoyed but God I’d give anything for her to be here right now. I knew that was selfish. She had friends and a job she could actually put on her tax forms with coworkers to miss her if she suddenly disappeared off the face of the Earth, but me? I had no one but her, making me perfectly expendable. I toyed with the rings in my pocket again. _How long before anyone even notices I’m gone?_ Maybe I’d known where I was the moment I’d woken up in that campsite and had just needed it to be spelled out for me. Either way, belief and acceptance were very different animals.

Tom handing me a bowl of stew brought me out of my contemplation and I hadn’t even registered he was making it over the fire pit. I didn’t thank him. I refused to be thankful for anything in this damned place. And I still wasn’t convinced that these two hadn’t played some part in bringing me here. If they were just innocent bystanders helping out a lost girl, they wouldn’t have known I wasn’t from this ‘Arda’ place. They clearly had more information, but right now they seemed unwilling to just give it to me.

They ate happily together across the fire, seemingly unperturbed by the silent suspicious glares I was sending their way. I jumped when something touched my back, only for me to turn and see [Baby Monster](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977217/) staring placidly up at me. _How long has it been there?_

Monster and I starred at each other for a while till I slowly sat back down and it then decided it was time to trot closer to the fire pit and make itself comfortable. On closer inspection, I was sure it was not a dog. Its body was more hyena-like and its snout was too tapered.

“Wargs are not evil creatures, Tasha. Terribly loyal though and it seems he has taken a liking to you,” Goldberry said.

“Yeah, well whatever he is, I don’t know if I forgive him for trying to eat me.”

Tom waved his hand dismissively between bites of stew, “Tis the way; all a circle.” He said nothing more.

That didn’t help me much, but at least now I knew it was a he. I tossed Monster some of the meat chunks from my stew and he caught them easily before scooting closer to me. I froze before I realized he was curling up around my feet. I guessed the saying about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach was true. Or maybe I’d saved his ass and he was feeling a little bit thankful. Either way he seemed content to lay on my feet near the fire and catch the occasional hunk of beef I dropped to him. The rest of dinner past without a word and once the sun had fully set, I was beckoned back into their small home to the same cot. [Monster](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977184/) joined me in my makeshift nest and I didn’t have the energy to question if he would decide I was a tasty snack at some point during the night. I fell into the most blissfully sleep, absent of anything and everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! So the end of the semester has come and I've managed to write several chapters in the last week, but I'm now realizing that we're not going in exactly the same direction I'd thought. Thus, unfortunately, rather large rewrites are going to have to start happening to the first two or so chapters just so that i'm not contradicting myself. I have up till chapter 10 written and chapter 11 still needs quite a bit of work. Lemme know what y'all think in the comments below and feel free to leave kudos! xoxo


	7. Outbound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 50 Kudos You Guys! Right on time too, because I've now officially completed all of the editing i wanted to do before uploading this new chapter. There are quite a few changed, so I'd suggest going back and rereading the chapters before this one if you really want to be caught up. If not, it won't affect your understand of this chapter though. Thanks!

[Give Thanks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAjgLcTaaB4)

“No.” I was back on that stupid fainting couch in the middle of that damned hall with those fucking tapestries. Again. “No. Go away.”

“This is my home. Where am I to go?”

“Then send me back! I didn’t ask to be brought here, you did that, so just send me back!” She crouched down in front of me and took my hands in hers. I hadn’t realized they were shaking.

“It’s alright, little sister. I am here to help you. No one will hurt you,” she rose to sit beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. The motion was so maternal I couldn’t help the sob that escaped me. She held me to her chest and rocked, making soft, gentle noises until the sobbing and shaking faded to sniffling.

“You have been called to this place and time by one greater than both of us. I am here to help you as I am able and teach you everything I know, but ultimately the choice to continue on each step of this journey will be yours and yours alone.”

“That choice has already been taken from me!” My voice was thick and muffled in her shoulder. “I didn’t ask to be sent here! My life isn’t perfect, but it’s mine and I want it back.”

She sighed again and pulled away with a sad look, “All I may tell you is that you have a path that must be walked, things that be learnt. But once you have learned all that you must, what you do with that power will be entirely your decision.” She looked me in my face, “this answer is unsatisfactory. 

“Very.” Her lips thinned into an apologetic smile.

“Come, let me make you a cup of tea. I’ve always found it to have surprising healing properties.”

“Yay, leaf water,” my false enthusiasm was not missed. She said nothing, but I saw her fight a smile for a moment. She helped me up and then led me to a tapestry hiding a different door than before.

She pushed the corner away from the wall to pass through the opening behind it and into a [chamber](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700976495/) filled with the smell of old books. Which made sense given that three of the four, thirty-foot tall walls were completely obscured from view by the tallest bookshelves I’d ever seen. The forth wall was made up of a huge [hearth](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977264/) with the largest tapestry I’d seen yet hung over top. It held what looked to be fifteen crests in two curved lines. All of the tapestries I’d seen so far were beautiful and almost looked real, but this one seemed impossibly ornate, each crest holding a thousand tiny images within the larger shapes. Eight crests in one row and seven in the opposite; the imbalance of the piece bothered me immensely for some reason.

“These are my…family members. I will explain, but first _tea_.” She looked inordinately excited by the prospect as she busied herself with pulling a wrapped package of tealeaves from a side chest and dropping them into the kettle she’d pulled from over the fire. I took a seat in one of the armchairs nearby. While allowing the tea to steep, she again rummaged around in the chest before producing a frankly ridiculous amount of items from such a small chest. Two tea cups, two saucers, two spoons, a sugar bowl, a tin of biscuits, a somehow still cold pitcher of cream, and a doily later, she sat back to arrange all the items and ignore my look of incredulity. _How in the fuck did all that fit…oh…right…magic. That’s gonna take some getting used to._

Theft had never been a compulsion for me thankfully, rather a means to an end, but I couldn't quite stop my brain from automatically cataloging the price I could get for each item. Find the right buyers and the china set alone could be worth several hundred bucks. I quickly shut the door on that train of thought.

“You good there, Mary Poppins?” She barely glanced back. “You know you still haven’t introduced yourself. If you don’t do it soon I’m gonna have to call you Ms. Poppins for all eternity and then where will we be?” She smiled and with a final adjustment of the doily, she looked at me and bowed deeply.

“I am Gwîr, or Vairë, whichever you prefer.” She took my hand gently, without really shaking it, but smiled kindly and I decided that despite all the shit that had happened, she meant me no harm.

“I think your preference takes precedence.” She just shrugged.

“With my family I do not have a name as you would recognize it.”

“Yeah…run that one by me again. How does that work exactly?” She gestured back to the tapestry with one hand.

“First tea, then explanations.” I bounced my leg in impatience. Finally she settled back with her two lumps of sugar.

“Before the beginning of all things, there was nothing but the Great Maker, Eru Ilúvatar, and…”

“Oh my fucking God…”

“Yes that is who we are discussing.”

“Vairë! Tom already did this with me! Can we not start at the beginning of _all things_ and just tell me who you are and what the hell is going on as it pertains to me?”

“Well perhaps if you had let him complete his tale rather than presuming him to be a simpleton, you would know that you have been called to walk the path of immortality.” Her voice was sharp, but I didn’t have enough room in my head to feel guilt because shock and confusion were taking up too much space.

“…One more time?”

“Well perhaps immortality is not the correct term since the elves are immortal and they can still fade from existence, but neither is ‘godhood’ as we are not omniscient, infallible, nor all-powerful, but we are powerful and eternal nonetheless.”

I stared at her. She sipped her tea at me.

“Okay, pretend like I never interrupted and start again.”

She smiled ruefully, “In the beginning, there was nothing but the Great Maker, Eru Ilúvatar, and he created the Ainur by giving us a portion of his Eternal Flame and bringing us to life. The Ainur were split into two groups, the Valar were the stronger, of which I am one, and the Maiar. This tapestry,” she motioned to the crests again, “are emblematic of each of the original Valar, including me.” She pointed to a symbol on the right; what looked like a blindfolded figure bent over a loom.

“How literal. Why blindfolded?”

“I can see all of the past but nothing of the future.” Her brow crinkled, and I wondered if she was annoyed by her blindness. “What did you think when you first saw this piece?” _Oh no, can she read my thoughts?_ “Tell me." 

I shrugged a little and decided I’d have to risk pissing her off, “it looks unbalanced.”

“Why?”

I felt like I was back in high school math class, having to answer a question I only half understand. “The sides are uneven?” She nodded.

“In more ways than one. Long ago Melkor,” she pointed to the dark flame emblem, “betrayed our Maker and had to be banished into [the Void](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/534380312019954512/). He remains there to this day, but the Valar were intended to number fifteen. The destruction of his betrayal can never be fully corrected because we are missing a piece of our circle. Manwë prayed to Eru for a way to confiscate Melkor’s powers, but he was told that no such thing could be done, but that we could mend the breech in our circle with another; you.”

“Why me?”

“Eru chose your soul from your Old World and brought you here when the time was deemed right so that you might be shown the path that must be taken. What happens beyond that point is up to you.”

“Yeah, but why _me_?” I mumbled into my cup. She tilted her head inquisitively. I shrugged, “a thief seems an odd choice for immortality. I would have thought you’d want someone good or some shit.”

“How would you define ‘good’?”

I thought for a moment, “Pure of heart.”

“No such sentient being exists. We all have stains on our souls, mortal or not. You have lived a hard life, making choices for survival that were not always easy or ethical. We need someone in our council with insight into the gray areas of life. Mistakes have been made before due to our lack of foresight...of understanding in such matters.”

I would mull over the implications of that later, “So this training, once it’s completed, I could choose to return to my previous life?”

“Yes.”

“And what happens if I refuse to take this journey?”

“Only you are capable of sending yourself back at the end of your journey. No one else has that gift, even should they wish to go against Námo’s proclamation.”

“Who?”

“My husband, Námo, is the one who makes all decrees for Eru in this world. He can only do so with express permission from Manwë and, thus Eru himself.”

“I’m so confused.” She gave me an apologetic smile. “So…god lessons,” I smiled weakly. She smiled and nodded.

She patted my arm, reminding me I hadn’t had any of my [tea](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977344/), “Valar lessons.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments welcome and appreciated as always. :)


	8. Blended

[Andrei](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWVJBigiwR8)

God lessons sucked.

After waking up to my daily dose of fur in the face from my new cuddle buddy, my days consisted of the kind of chores that only living in the middle of nowhere without access to takeout or running water could require. _Who knew magical beings still had to do laundry?_ After traveling back and forth from the [stream](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977030/) with Goldberry, and Monster at our heels, for the better part of the morning, we would beat out laundry on boards with the worst lathering soap I had ever come across and hang them out to dry. And then we did it again. By the end of the morning my hands were so pruned, arms and back so sore I wondered how they didn’t just fall right off.

And of course the animals had to be fed _again_ and the pony, an unfortunate dear named Fatty Lumpkin. The rest of the day would typically consist of gathering and preparing food for the [pantry](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977115/) or shadowing Tom as he cared for the forest’s various inhabitance. I seemed to be perpetually too slow, scrambling to keep up with his long strides as he bound down the [paths](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977029/) along the forest floor. I’ll admit I was in awe of the connection between him and the animals and even the trees at points, but the wonder was quickly outweighed by annoyance at his eccentricities. He’d skip in one direction for several minutes before suddenly changing course for no discernible reason.

I was a guest in their house, so I tried not to complain, but I was starting to resent them both with a churning fire in my belly. They were so endlessly jolly, always whistling and singing and laughing and I just wanted to crack them both over the head like I’d threatened to when I first woke up on that _stupid_ cot. We never talked about my becoming a Valar and we never talked about what happened during my nights, though I was sure they knew. Just two weeks in and Tom’s rambling, nonsensical singing was driving me up the dirt packed walls of the little shack we shared.

I asked Vairë why the two had seemingly adopted me without any fuss. Her response was the kind of noncommittal and vague riddling I’d grown to expect from all three of my companions.

“The Maker thought you needed normalcy. Have you tried singing along?” It took just two more days for my pride to crack and grudgingly hum along with Tom’s unusual verses without chorus. Another week past before I was singing to myself without his instigation, grudgingly admitting to myself that Vairë was right, the work passed more quickly with a tune. I much preferred my own music though, and I took to carrying my phone around, thankful for the solar charging case.

Monster continued to follow at my heels and we began to build an odd sort of friendship, if only because he was surprisingly funny. He may have been nonverbal, but his expression when Tom began singing _again_ was sometimes the only thing that could make me laugh all day. I began thinking I should perhaps rename him something better than ‘Monster’, but as he grew larger and larger he also became more and more the cuddly, quintessential Gentle Giant, and the irony of it made the name stick even more.

Before every sunrise and sunset Vairë insisted I take part in twice-daily meditation with Tom and Goldberry. I was not super excited about it; whining and foot stomping may have been involved. But every day like clockwork, they would sit in their stonewall facing the sunrise or sunset, close their eyes and seem to turn to stone till the [sun](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977575/) was properly in the sky or gone completely. I tried to meditate like I was supposed to, but before long I’d become restless and my mind would wander in agitation, starting to count leaves or stones or even watching the pair of Maia to see if I could detect even a twitch of movement. I never could, so I just dicked around, occasionally stealing Tom's pipe and some pipe weed, which I had been slightly devastated to learn had none of the same effects as marijuana, to [smoke](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/616993217672370413/) or braiding Monster's growing mane. I became quite accomplished friendship bracelet maker soon enough; eight year old me would have been proud. Meanwhile, Monster would plop what amount of his now more considerable girth in my lap, typically his ass, and proceed to nap. I’d lost all sense of time by then and didn’t know what rate Wargs matured anyway, but he had grown from the size of a pug to a mastiff and didn’t show any signs of slowing.

Where my days consisted of physical exhaustion bookended by boredom, my nights were filled with the kind of bone deep weariness that only mental tedium can create. There were just so many dates. Birth dates and death dates, years of beginnings and ends of wars, and every damn family had so many branches to their family trees that my brain began to feel like an ever expanding number generator. I knew something happened in 510, but it could have been one of fifty different things. It didn’t help that my time at night could last far past the normal span of night; Vairë had explained something about how dreams could compress time but I hadn’t been listening.

We studied everything, from Arda’s history and customs to politics and economics, all while trying to learn the languages of the time and their evolution. My writing in [Quenya](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/296463587947864497/) had finally just gotten halfway decent when Vairë had deigned to inform me that as of present day, it was an all but a dead language. Poor student that I had always been, my progress was obviously much slower than she liked and my habit of memorizing in my own words was not exactly to her taste.

“Tell me again.”

“Jesus Christ, okay so…Melkor’s attacking Gondolin, and Glorfindel’s guys get ambushed, so they fall back because a fucking dragon shows up. The House of Harp, still think that’s a stupid ass name by the way, show up and they all regroup back at the Square of the King. They try to hold their position but they’re getting their asses handed to them. Then one of the Balrogs roll up on the refugee groups, so Glorfindel faces off with him and stabs it, but as it’s going down it grabs his hair and pulls him down with it. By the way, ‘dragged to death by hair’ has got to be the worst fucking end to a life of badassery that I have ever heard. But then everything was fine ‘cause he hung out here in the Halls for a while till Manwë gave him his old body back with some upgrades, so I guess it has a happy ending?” Several months into our training and she looked ready to commit homicide, fuck the need to ‘redress the balance’ or whatever.

“Put your hand on the tapestry.”

“Wait really?” She’d yet to let me touch one and based on the reaction I’d received from previous attempts, I’d kind of assumed that doing so would fry my tiny still-mortal brain.

“Touch your finger to the image of Glorfindel.” She looked scary now, and I was starting to get nervous. Every once in a while I’d forget she was an immortal being that could probably zap me out of existence if she wanted. Eru’d probably be pissed, but his whole shtick was love and good vibes, so she’d probably get off pretty easy. _Then again they had plopped their brother in a pit of darkness for all eternity, which was pretty warranted, but still…_

I put my hand to the image and suddenly everything was on fire.

* * * * * *

[Baron Harkonnen Dies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvgaHvgHgSM)

_I could not breathe._

_I covered my eyes with the sleeve of my tunic and turned toward the screams of innocents behind me. The[beast](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/514114113695865992/) had followed. I leapt forward and planted myself before it so that they might escape and searched for an opening in its defenses. There was so much [smoke](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700932342/). _

_Finally I saw my only chance, a swift strike forward and my blade sank into its belly with a dull squelch. Disengaging as quickly as possible, I dodged out of the way of falling limbs till I made the grave error of looking back. They were all dead or dying. Those who could escape had, but the sight of my fallen kin was a physical weight on my chest I’d not felt since Nan Dungortheb._

_The attack from the creature I’d bested was so sudden I could do nothing but be dragged in mute horror back toward the ledge and into free-fall. I wondered if Ecthelion would be waiting for me in Námo’s Halls. The darkness overtook me before the[Abyss](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/326370304236796358/) did._

* * * * * *

[The Impossible Planet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMwomsJ9MR0)

“Oh God,” I nearly vomited, trying to rise from all fours on shaking limbs.

“Get up.” I did as she told me slow as a snail’s pace. “What did you just learn? 

“Don’t touch the fucking artwork?” I bit out with a snarl, still trying not to lose my last meal.

“Do not think this is a game. These lives and stories are real and are worthy of as much _respect_ as any of those now living.” She did not raise her voice, which just made the burning shame so much worse.

She sighed when I wouldn’t look up from my feet, “That’s enough for today.” She walked away, her grey dress swishing behind her with finality.

“I didn’t ask to be here!” I called after her, but she was already gone.

Feeling ready to cry or hit something, I wandered through the Halls, waiting for the tickling feeling I’d grown to recognize as my call back to the physical realm. I’d learned pretty quickly that my nights could span for what felt like days at a time before I was called back to my body. I soon realized that I’d gone farther than ever had before, however, and I couldn’t remember the way back. Sighing I resigned myself to spending the rest of my night lost when I came across a doorway.

Doors weren’t particularly unusual in the Halls; it’s just that all of the ones I’d seen so far were covered by one of Vairë’s tapestries. This one was out in the open, with a painted design of flowers and ivy around the frame of the arch, and the black iron bolts and latch replaced with more metal flowers and vines. I reached out to touch one of the buds, when the whole thing swung open and in shone bright sunlight.

In all my nights here in the Halls I’d never seen a window, let alone an exit. I’d assumed it was the nature of the place, existing in perpetual darkness made sense for the place that housed the dead, but I’d never really thought of the outdoors while spending my time buried in scrolls and books and dictionaries in so many languages that my head spun. If I had, I definitely would have assumed it was nighttime there too. But this was just glorious.

 _A[garden](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977718/)! _ I was frustrated that I’d never run across it before, but given that there was apparently only one entrance and exit I wasn’t surprised. But oh, it was beautiful! [Golden flowers](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/297448750372817694/) bloomed in [beds](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700977719/) as far as I could see among tree of all types that I was pretty sure couldn’t usually be grown in the same climate. The [door](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700874606/) was the only opening back into the Halls, with long-moss covering almost the entire stonewall rising behind me.

The pathway curved around various bed of everything from fruit trees to bluebells to pines to orchids and everything in between, but always those golden petaled blooms. I walked through it all, reveling in the feel of sun on my skin when I heard voice in the distance. Distant at first, as I walked farther their voices were joined with the sound of splashing water. So intent on the prospect of meet someone other than my three companions of the last long while, I didn’t notice the oddly shaped lump in a patch of golden flowers till it moved and out popped a head.

“You’re here!”

“Oh my God! Sorry, I didn’t see ya’ there.” The flower covered girl just grinned as she extricated herself from her patch of flora and then suddenly I found myself being hugged by this very small stranger.

“I’m pleased you’re here!” I couldn’t help but laugh, awkward as it was, at her pure exuberance. On closer inspection she was far older than her slight build and youthfully rounded features initially suggested. I recognized the power radiating off of her too well to miss it. Her inexplicably electrical presence was just like Vairë’s.

“And you are…” She shook her head in amusement but backed up and gave me a full curtsy.

“I am Vána of the Valar. Was my eternal beauty not evident?” she devilishly winked, adopting a haughty voice that coaxed a surprised laugh from me and had me playing along. 

“An absolute pleasure madam!” My curtsy was far less dexterous than hers. “I am Natasha of the Reids,” I singsonged in my best approximation of an uppity Londoner. She gave me a brief golf clap before dropping the act and grinning again. 

“Thank the Almighty you’re not a stoic one. I don’t think I could have taken yet another _serious_ sibling.” She said the word like it was a sin. “Some of them can be so _boring_ ,” her voice and gestures were animated as she spoke. I was about to correct her assumption that I’d become a Vala when we were interrupted.

“Are you muttering to yourself again… _oh_.” The voice behind me, from up the hill, cut off with a squeak and the quick patter of bare feet was followed by my second surprise hug of the day. I wondered if this would be a trend.

And suddenly this new arrival was crying into my shoulder. I looked at Vána in slight terror but he just smiled in exasperation.

“Nessa,” she chided gently, “Nessa! Let go my dear, there’s no need for that.” My sobbing Valarin backpack was detached and sat down on the edge of the flowerbed as slowly the tears slowed to blubbered and sniffled apologies.

“I am so sorry! I’m just so _happy_ ,” a new wave of tears began and I couldn’t help the smile creeping back up my face. I’d never had a greeting quite like it.

“So…you’re Nessa?” She blinked up at me and I got my first good look at her. Where Vána’s hair was a golden as the flowers she was known for, Nessa’s hair was dark and natural. Though I knew the Valar chose their own physical manifestation, I supposed I’d assumed they’d all look related.

“Oh we all look quite different,” Vána interrupted my train of thought.

I froze, “So you can read my mind.” It was something I’d thought about after Vairë had explained that the Valar had been born as pure energy and had communicated through thought only until the Elves were born.

“I apologize, it was not intentional. I have not interacted with any mortals in a long time. We usually communicate only by thought here.”

“I know…I guess I was just hoping my thoughts were my own.”

Nessa shook her head as she pulled herself up to standing with our help, “Since you don’t know how to control them, your thoughts are quite loud.”

“But we will block them,” Vána interrupted. “We understand it is a breach of privacy.” She and Nessa nodded together and I couldn’t help but see a familial resemblance in that moment.

I shrugged after a moment of deliberation. I didn’t really have anything to hide anyway. “Meh, Vairë’s probably been reading my mind this whole time so there’s not much point. Hope you don’t mind consistent pop culture reference you won’t understand.”

They both looked at each other in confusion, movements perfectly in sync and I cackled with laughter at the thought of them in matching Thing One and Thing Two sweaters. I started up the hill with them in tow only to be stopped at the sight of an unearthly beautiful pond. The large, banked pool acting as a moat for the island of moss and tree roots in the center. Water gently trickled down the trunk of the tree from somewhere in its twisting branches and into the pool below.

So entranced by the serpentine curving of the tree, I didn’t notice the woman on the other side of the pond digging in the flowerbeds. Golden leaves were elaborately braided into her dark hair and she wore robes so green they nearly blended in to the grass and leaves of the bushes she was planting.

When I’d first met Vairë her indescribable presence had cowed me but I’d quickly gotten used to it and begun seeing her in much the same way as I had any human teacher; an authority figure, but ultimately still a person. Sleeves rolled up and dirt on her hands, this woman almost passed for human at first glance, but then the sun reflected in her watchful brown eyes and I realized that all the Ainur I’d met so far were small fish compared to her. The energy that she exuded was calm, but power the likes of which I’d never experienced. Even with her warm smile and beckoning, I approached on slightly weak knees.

“Do you like Estë’s fountain?” Her direct question shocked me out of silence but I couldn’t look away from my boots.

“It’s beautiful. I didn’t know Estë’s Fountain would be here, though.” My mental map of Valinor seemed woefully ignorant now. She patted the ground beside her and I sat, only then realizing that Nessa and Vána had run off somewhere and left the two of us alone. I tried not to feel annoyed.

“Mortals maps are too fixed to properly capture what we and these places are,” I started at her hearing my thoughts.

“Do not be ashamed. You will not understand until you can; that is the way of such transient thing.” She must have seen, or maybe heard, my confusion and she stopped to think for a moment before elaborating. “You know we made this world?” I nodded. “Then you know we can shape our reality to be whatever it is that we want to be. Why would a static map be an accurate representation of the topography of a place that is made by thought?”

“I guess that makes sense. Why would you bother living in the same place for an eternity when you can just pick up your house and move it whenever and wherever you wish?” She smiled.

“You are correct in a way, but all this extends beyond the physical,” she motioned to the trees overhead. “Physical changes require more effort, but the spiritual ones are constantly drifting. In the physical realm Námo’s Halls, my gardens, Estë’s Fountain, they are nowhere near each other. We rather like our alone time,” I couldn’t help but crack a smile at the mischief in her eyes, “but so long as you are learning and in need of us, this configuration will remain.”

“And you are…” though I thought I knew.

“I am known as Yavanna,” she bowed her head in a formal kind of way and I found myself bowing back. She was one of the Aratar, the eight most powerful of the Valar. It was no wonder I’d felt bowled over; she could flatten me like a pancake more easily than the Demon Willow if she’d wanted. It took me a moment to realize she was smiling again. _Oh right…mind readers._

 Still chuckling, her hand over her mouth could not conceal her smiling eyes. She cleared her throat and handed me a pair of gardening scissors. “If you’re in my garden, you work,” she said with a stern look fixed firmly in place.

 Even with her perfectionism, I couldn’t help but feel lighter than I had in weeks. She silently passed me the basket she was placing the refuse into and her calm seeped into my bones as we silently went to work, pruning the dead leaves from the bushes in front of us. We were interrupted several minutes later as the footfalls of the closest thing to a giant I had ever seen reaching us.

 As he entered the clearing from the copse of trees, I’d have bet my entire life’s savings that that was Tulkas. Ridiculous large, muscled, blond bearded, and a ruddy complexion; he was a living Thor. And that was before I suddenly could no longer breathe. _Damn he’s got a strong grip!_ I’d been hugged a lot today, but none of them had consisted of being lifted clear off the ground and spun around at top speeds.

 “Tulkas! Stop, you were harm her with your enthusiasm.” He immediately put me down but the Cheshire cat grin didn’t leave his face. I had a hunch it was a permanent feature.

“So you have finally arrived, little one!” he said with a slap on my back that near set my on my ass. “Greetings sister, I am Tulkas!” _Does he always talk so loud?_  

“Yes,” Yavanna muttered without looking up, “yes he does.” I looked back up at him to see if he was offended, but that smile hadn’t budged.

“Now, I have a very important question for you,” he said, bending to look directly into my eyes. “How do you feel about wrestling?”

* * * * * *

[Medhel an Gwyns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rM6ztHdEIo)

“That was a terrible idea.”

“To be fair, it wasn’t your idea.” I was back in my original position next to Yavanna, but this time with my head in Vána’s lap and my entire body aching. According to Vána I’d ‘gotten lucky’ and according to Tulkas I’d ‘get better.’ Well, his never-ending enthusiasm was appreciated, but I was sorry to say I didn’t think I’d ever beat him in a wrestling match. Tulkas and Nessa were now splashing around in the fountain’s shallower end, occasionally catching us with some of the spray till Yavanna barked an order for a ceasefire.

Watching them flirt and chase each other I had an abrupt thought, “If all Valar are siblings, how can Tulkas and Nessa be married. Or any of you, for that matter?”

Nessa snorted but Yavanna answered, “We only use the term ‘family’ in the freest sense of the word. We are as close as blood or kin but we cannot be biologically related because we have no biology. For a long time, the Maiar and we were the only things in existence. It did not matter that we all came from the Maker because there was no other way to be. We sprung into being fully formed, and at various points those that wished for a closer union paired off, and those that did not did not.”

After that the three of us remained in silence for a long while, listening to Tulkas and Nessa’s chatter and the movement of the garden’s life around us till the familiar tingling in my toes and fingers signaled it was time to return to wakefulness. I said my goodbyes and faded back through the song to consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Kudos and comments as you will. :)


	9. Unheard Melody

[Adagio for String](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQsgE0L450)

That morning’s meditation came with it an idea. I heard the singing, what Vairë had called the Ainulindalë, Eru’s song that created the world, every time I transitioned from waking to sleeping and then back again but I’d never tried to hear it on my own.

At first I didn’t know where to look for it; was it in the wind or the water? My [first hour](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700982581/) was entirely unsuccessful, but as the sun rose just high enough for the [rays](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700982586/) to play across the leaves above us I finally heard a single note. It was a soft, whispered thing, so low I had to concentrate intensely to hear it, but it was there. It played in the light of the sunrise.

I held on to that little drone all day, taking longer in my tasks than usual to make sure I kept it in my ears at all times. I kept it all day until the [sun](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700982558/) began to set and it faded away to silence, and my curiosity grew. That evening I focused on a flower to my right, and soon I could hear a gentle tinkle seeming to float up from the [petals](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700982590/) themselves. 

I had thought Vairë meant the Song of Creation had been a spell of some kind and it had sung everything into existence. Now I could see it was more complicated. It was not a song I’d imagine would have made it onto the radio back home. There were no lyrics or melody, but instead there was a note for everything, a separate vibration that was as individual as a fingerprint. The notes of each thing thrummed on continuously, but together created a perfect harmony of sounds. 

On the second day I noticed that while rocks and the sun’s notes stayed the same, [plants](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/539376492850969631/) changed day to day, sounding more energized one day or the next. But with the animals around us, the notes were constantly changing with their mood or attention. 

By the third [morning](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700982561/) of my revelation I was still having trouble hearing more than two notes at a time, but I understood how Goldberry and Tom could sit and listen for so long. 

That night I asked Goldberry how they could get anything done with the Music all around them; how they didn’t just sit and listen all day. I could easily become addicted. She responded in typical Goldberry fashion, “It is what it is only because of what it is. The Music holds the hum of life, but it is not purpose. Without purpose, the hum dies. Without life _without_ the Music, there is no Music.” I mulled that over in my mind for several minutes and she allowed me my silence.

“So the Music started life, but now it only exists because of the life it created?” She nodded, seemingly satisfied with my still-confused question. Just then Tom hopped by whistling and singing in his usual abstract manner, but now that I could hear the Music I realized it was not so abstract. His notes changed as the Music did, never static, crafting a melody on top of a constantly changing chorus.

“He’s singing along.” Before I’d thought he was a loon, now I realized he was a master. Goldberry laughed at my expression. ”Do you think he would teach me?” I asked with more eagerness than I’d felt since my appearance in Middle-earth.

She smiled softly and said, “I think he has been awaiting.”

That night after Vairë dismissed me in a huff at the state of my Sindarin verb conjugations, I raced to the garden to tell Nessa and Vána about my newfound discovery. After getting over their mild horror that I’d never heard it before, we ran through the gardens together, introducing me to the sounds of life itself.

* * * * * * 

“Would you teach me?” I asked Tom, and with a smile filled with pride and maybe a little emotion, he agreed.

Tom Bombadil was a man of contradictions. Hearing the Music could only make so much sense out of him. And so I became accustom to nonsense. We didn’t speak often in our quest to be perfectly in tune with the world, but we did whistle and eventually the whistling became a language of our own. It was a basic one, to be sure, but we called and responded, neither roaming so far away that we could not hear the other. Once I went too far and he sent a bird to find me, but the poor thing looked entirely put out by the whole experience, so I stayed close from then on or risk it glaring at me from the branches.

He taught me new songs and old songs and how to make my own. He showed me that each chorus of sounds could be untangled like the threads of one of Vairë tapestries, each individual seemingly small on their own, but each as necessary to the whole piece as any of the rest. He would have me [hang](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700942496/) upside down or put my head [underwater](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700981147/) to hear how the Music would change. Water creatures tended to be a bit more self-conscious, but when coaxed the sounds of the pond made us cry with their beauty. He passed me his good handkerchief and refused to take it back, simply ruffling my hair and giving me a watery grin.

* * * * * *

 It was not long after my lessons with Tom began that I started noticing the changes I was undergoing. My perception of time was so out of balance I couldn’t possibly know how long I’d been with them and eventually I lost count too of how many times I’d visited the Gardens. And the pain of missing my old family dulled. I was confident I would succeed and see my grandmother again, after all I’d been chosen by Eru so what was the point in worrying?

Goldberry and Tom became more my parents than my own biological ones had been; they’d died so long ago my memories of them had been more from stories Grams told me than my own experiences. I knew they’d loved me, but they hadn’t raised me, and at this point I’d probably spend more time with Tom and Goldberry than I ever had with Laura and Jeffery Reid. But it was after one of Tom’s more eccentric lessons that I started to notice the ways in which I was different than before.

The new mental clarity came from the Music, I thought, perhaps a side effect of the meditation and intense focusing I was doing daily for hours on end. My memory was better as well, maybe due to the intense amount of instant recall Vairë required of me during our lessons. My speech had changed greatly, but that too could be explained away due to the constant flip-flop of languages my brain and tongue were using. I consistently switched between Quenya, Westron, and Valarin with Vairë, and Tom and Goldberry had a tendency to switch even more than Vairë. Slowly I used English less and less and when I occasionally did, my accent became more and more foreign sounding even to my own ears. I also experienced increased strength and stamina, but it could be explained by all the chores and running around with Tom during the day and Tulkas, Nessa, and Vána at night. It was more than that though, and there were little things that first clued me in.

My hair no longer shed, but it had grown longer. My nails didn’t chip, but they still grew. My skin no longer had acne or blemishes, but I still needed to bathe. My teeth had stayed straight without my old retainer, but they still required brushing, though much less than the dentist recommended twice a day since either Middle Earth didn’t seem to have sugar or Tom and Goldberry didn’t favor it.

These little things prickled in the back of my mind, but it wasn’t until one day after my usual escapades with Tom that I decided it was time to venture through the forest on my own. I’d been afraid to at first, worried I’d come back across the Willow. Monster accompanied me, trotting alongside my running strides till I caught a flash of color out of the corner of my eye and we turned to investigate, the two of us on a hunt for the blue butterfly.

He spotted it first, zooming off and half way up a tree before I even saw it. I’d learned long ago that Monster’s climbing was not to be fucked with; in that way he was more cat than dog. I followed, [pulling myself up](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700942497/) branch by branch until we neared the treetops, and I realized I was closer to our pretend prey. Grinning with glee at my victory I [reached out](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700981171/) for the insect and carefully trapped it in my hands. Hearing his whine behind me, I turned, expecting to see an expression of annoyance but instead I saw wide eyes. The universe showed fit to explain why when the branch supporting all of my weight broke and sent me rushing down toward the ground with a shout.

An empty blackness the likes of which I’d not felt since my experience seeing Glorfindel’s death through his own eyes consumed me for a brief while. And then I was back, opening my eyes and breathing in a gasp; a gasp that left me sputtering since Monster had chosen just that moment to lick my face with a high whine.

“Gross! Stop it, boy, _stop_!” _How am I alive?_

I lay absolutely still for a moment and just breathed, mentally inspecting every part of my body. I’d landed face up, the branch laying next to my feet, so the only pain I felt was on the back of me. I flexed my hands first and then my arms, and with my arms slightly bruised but not too badly damaged, I inspected the rest of me. My head was sore but there wasn’t even a bump. I shifted slightly, and there wasn’t any pain from my spine or even much tenderness. Monster whined again as I pulled myself up to sitting and then standing with caution.

_That[drop](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700981175/) should have killed me. What is that, forty feet? How am I not dead?_

That same damn butterfly had the balls to fly back right in front of our faces and before I could even blink Monster had batted it well away from us with a grumpy snarl. I huffed a laugh and gave him a chin scratch before beginning my sore hobble back home. Shaking and bruises already blue, I stumbled back to Goldberry’s arms and my own straw bed for a blessedly dreamless and Vairë-less nap. Eru must have known I didn’t need her nagging.

The concept of my fading mortality was more concrete from then on. It was no longer a far off decision; it was a continuing process that was happening with or without my permission.

My life as a mortal was over and, though I’d been assured I’d get my old life back at the end of this somehow, there was no doubt I’d be a completely new person. I could speak and read in several languages now including Elven, human, and the Dwarven language from all three ages; recite the entire history of Arda since its cosmology to present day including political negotiations and military movements; I could hunt and survive in the wild; I had played fetch with my would-be murderer turned pet and playmate; I had laughed with gods; and some of the greatest mysteries of the universe had been shared with me. If I became human again, would I lose all that? _Will they take my memory? Or worse, what if I remember everything, but can’t hear the Music anymore?_

When I’d first arrived in the Old Forest, I’d been angry, rightfully so. But now I found myself wondering what exactly in my old life was so worth fighting for? I’d worked two shitty jobs to pay the rent on an apartment I hated; I had no degree, and no family. _But Grams_ , a little voice in my headed whispered, _she raised you. How could you just abandon her?_ But my whole life had been a misery besides her and the idea of escaping past mistakes was incredibly temping. I had been twenty years old and already dead on the inside. _How would I even go back to that now?_

I couldn’t, that was the truth. There was no way in hell I could go back. And so it was decided. I would become a Vala.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are appreciated as always!


	10. Beautiful Destruction

[Kalimankou Denkou](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lak6nZekv5M)

My memory of the following weeks is muddled, but it was sometime later that we had a visitor. He was old and robed in grey with a wilting hat and a staff that may have fooled me into believing him infirm had I not heard his Music. The lilting sound was similar to Tom’s and Goldberry’s but he had a flighty quality that made me wary. _Definitely one of the Maiar, but definitely not to be depended upon._

I first saw evidence of our guest on my usual rounds of the inner woods with Monster racing along beside. We’d taken to [leaping](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700982433/) from tree to tree, trying to sneak up on each other and only occasionally succeeding. More usually, one would jump for the other and we’d both go tumbling down to the packed earth below. If I’d still been human I probably would have had concussions on a daily basis, but now I was something else entirely. The structure built by 21st century morals and expectations had always entirely faded away now. “Pure wild,” Tom called me and I took to it and the freedom it brought with what Vairë found to be an alarming verve.

It was during one of our extended hide-and-seek games that I saw boot tracks below that clearly didn’t belong to Tom’s oversized feet, Goldberry and I never wore shoes, and no one else came this far in the Old Forest. Sometimes humans or Hobbits came to the edge, but any who stupidly journeyed father in found the trees whispering to them and were generally scared out of their wits and were considered lucky if they returned home with their underthings unsoiled. Needless to say I’d never really considered we could have visitors. The trees weren’t whispering though, they hummed their same tune as always, and their lack of reaction made me wonder.

It was a few minutes later that I jumped up into a maple tree I’d dubbed sometime ago ‘Aunt Knot’ due to a near face-like bulge on the trunk. Goldberry laughed that she may have been an Ent once upon a time but I wouldn’t know what a tree herder looked like; for all I knew she may have been. From my [perch](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700942459/) on one of Aunt Knot’s bows I could see the intruding Maia lighting a pipe not unlike Tom’s.

When he’d finished packing the dried leaves down, sparks from his fingers alit the them and within seconds he was smoking like a chimney and emitting the now familiar scent of Old Toby pipe weed. _He’s Istari, then. A wizard!_ I’d never met a wizard before, though admittedly I hadn’t met very many people in Middle Earth. His voice suddenly ringing out into the near quiet startled me from my thoughts.

“Will you continue to spy on me from there till sunset like a sneaky little fiend or would you be so kind as to come down and introduce yourself properly?” he enquired in Common. I narrowed my eyes at his commanding tone and didn’t drop to the ground, motioning for Monster to stay hidden as well. I did decide however to break my own silence.

“Strangely enough, I’m not terribly keen on interlopers.”

“Interloper! Well I never…how _dare_ you! I’ll have you know that I have an open invitation from the master of these woods to come and stay for tea any day I wish.” He looked quite put out by the accusation actually, which would have had me cackling in mirth under less unusual circumstances. Nevertheless, I couldn’t quite keep a smile out of my voice.

“Which I would believe, sir, if you were headed in the correct direction and it was not well after tea time.” Goldberry had never mentioned any visitors, standing invitation or otherwise and his imperious attitude bothered me, so I found myself wondering how much fun I could have at his expense before Tom had to come and save me from his knobby clutches. 

“I am simply an old wanderer…” he started to put on an act I’m sure he’d used many times prior.

“Old man, Eru’s ass!” I sputtered before I could stop myself. “You are Istari and old by definition, show me a young one and that will be the true miracle.” Clearly unsure of who or what he was dealing with, in his shock he dropped the kindly old grump gag, and suddenly was looking up with great interest. I would perhaps have been more cowed by his stern look had he been looking into the correct tree.

“And who might you be?"

“The one who will be watching you till you either made your way to the house of this land’s proprietor or out of the forest entirely.” He grumbled something unintelligible. “What was that?”

“Well, invisible madam of mystery, if you could simply point me in the direction of the river, I believe I can find my way to the abode of Tom Bombadil from there.” He looked mildly embarrassed, and I directed him archly in the correct direction.

“Walk south for a few minutes and you will come across the river bed. Follow the current and you will find _Goldberry’s_ abode where Tom Bombadil also resides.” Goldberry and I did ten times more to keep up that home and the livestock and garden attached than Tom ever did, and I’d be damned if he presumed her to simply sit pretty all day and be waited on hand and foot. His deep bow, whether in thanks to my direction or acceptance of my correction, was accompanied with an amused twitch of his lips. 

“You’re generosity is astounding, oh Madam of Mystery.” I snorted loud enough for him to hear, but pointedly said nothing. 

We walked the way I had directed him to the bank and then the grey robed wizard seemed to know where he was going, moving forward with more surety. As we meandered I wondered which of the grey wizards he could be. There were several of them in Middle Earth at any given time, but he seemed quite used to his human body meaning he’d probably had it for quite some time. I began making a mental list of the possibilities when I realized he had slowed dramatically from his original pace several minutes previously. Monster and I stayed in the trees and watched him pick his way through the underbrush to our little home. I sighed yet again at his slow pace, and he might have slowed down even further just to spite me.

I listened in on the trees while we went, feeling their vibrations under my hands and bare feet. I longed to sing back to them, but I felt inhibited with this stranger present, Maia though he was. I’d never seen anyone but Tom sing in harmony with the chorus. The Valar seemed to sing in general and listen to the chorus of the world, but never did they create music with it. Maybe that was Tom’s gift. I’d never asked him what he was the Maia of, but perhaps I should have obviously assumed the answer to be ‘song.’

His pace slowed further till I groaned with unfettered annoyance and he finally looked up in the correct tree with such a sharp look I wondered if he’d served under Vairë.

“If you’re so deeply impatient with an old man’s pace, perhaps you could deign to decent to mortal depths and lend a hand!” he sassed, motioning to the saddlebags he had over his left shoulder. With yet another heaving sigh, now that I knew he hated that I’d be doing it much more often, I did descend; making sure to scare him with my sudden entrance into his field of vision. Tucking and rolling to my feet, I made the customarily deep bow of greeting Vairë insisted was necessary during all first meetings. _He may be bad-tempered, but I’d be damned if I have to get an earful from Vairë because of this old coot._

“Natasha, at your service sir. And you are?” I asked in an overly polite tone with what Nessa had dubbed my ‘innocent eyes’. They worked like a charm on Tom, not so much on our overly-eyebrowed guest. Or maybe it would have done had he not been so puzzled. I righted myself and held out my hand for his bags, which seemed to stir him from his confusion. I wasn’t too put out by his staring, I knew my aesthetic was closer to feral than courtly but frankly I couldn’t give a shit.

Barefoot was the new normal for me, and my feet showed it with near disturbingly thick calluses and perpetually dirty toes. Some of the clothes that’d been left in my pack were still in use, but most had been worn through by now. Goldberry had been kind enough to take my initial rejection of dresses and skirts as a final one, and had first sewn for me and then later given me the skills to sew my own trousers and shirts. My standards for clothing were quite different though, and I’m sure in my homemade textile overalls, admittedly short even by Old World standards, and with my riotous curls I was quite alarming. He was good enough not to comment however. Monster of course chose that moment to grace us with his presence, which received a far more aggressive reaction.

“No!” I said trying to keep my voice calm as I positioned myself between monster and the wizard, now on offense with his staff aloft, “I’ll thank you not to kill him! Monster, sit! Good boy,” I patted him nervously. Several tense seconds past but the wizard seemed to recognize he was the only one being aggressive, and lowered his staff warily. Pointed ignoring the gray robed visitor, I swung the bags I’d been handed onto Monster, who huffed in annoyance but trotted in the direction of home.

“I do not believe you have introduced yourself,” he said, still bewildered.

“Neither have you,” I reminded him. His only response was more grumbling but I noticed his Music was shifting more rapidly now, emotions changing quickly as he contemplated. I simply walked on, following my furry friend.

When the wizard and I arrived at the house, Tom and Goldberry were both outside and greeted him in their slightly confusing way as he bowed low to both of them. Goldberry offered quite contradictory food options while Tom asked why his hat looked ever so sad. I dropped his bags on the stone wall and retreated to the trees with Monster soon following.

I couldn’t stifle my giggle at the proceedings and the wizard, who I now knew from their greetings to be Olórin, eyed the trees in dramatic suspicion.

“You have accrued a gatekeeper, it seems,” he stage whispered to Goldberry and she shook with laughter as she guided him inside the house. Tom beckoned me down and I grudgingly returned to the soft earth with Monster at my heels. I remained unsure about our visitor however. “Does he know?” I asked him in Quenya.

“Of what?”

“Of me!”

“Well you spoke to him, so I’d reckon he’s aware of your existence.” I frowned at him, not amused at his typical nonsense.

“What can I say in front of him?” He simply shrugged, unhelpful in such things as always. “What are the implications of me telling him? Or does he already know? What does he know, Tom?”

“May I assume that I am the topic of conversation?” Olórin’s amused face appeared in the doorway.

“You may do as you please,” I retorted. “Are you staying for dinner or simply vastly late for tea?”

“Shall we say quite early for breakfast tomorrow morning?” _God fucking damn it._

It was not his presence specifically that I found so off-putting, simply the apparent duration of his or anyone’s intrusion into our lives and our forest. It felt like a great violation to the beautiful bubble we’d maintained for so long. After dinner was eaten and before breakfast tomorrow we’d listen to the Music, but now there would be another note, and the whole thing would be off kilter and _wrong_. Mentally cursing up a storm, I helped Goldberry prepare the evening meal and after it was eaten in our usual quiet way, she and I went off to complete our nightly ablutions.

“Why do you dislike him so much? You seem to find him amusing enough at first,” she asked me as I passed her the comb once we were drying on the rock in the last of the warm sunlight.

“He is used to getting his own way.”

“He is Maiar.”

“You’re not like that. I can see his…manipulation. He relies on tricks and backwards logic and confounding language to confuse and get what he wishes. I would rather he were honest.”

“You think him a liar?”

“I think he does not consider omission or careful crafting of the truth a lie, which is just as reprehensible.”

“Now who’s lying?”

“He will ruin the Music!” I loudly whispered to her. She was silently contemplative for a moment.

“The song is not ours alone, my love. You will have to hear many forms of it in your life, some most painful and some lovely. Olórin’s addition to our corner of the woods will not do any damage. Come here.” She pulled me toward her and began combing through my hair, now more than halfway down my back. I’d always kept it shorter in my Old World, but having it so long made the red curls as wild as I had become and I found myself loving the untamable quality.

“Everything we have here seems so fragile, like it could all be blown away in an instant. ”

She griped my chin and turned me too look at her, meeting my eyes with more ferocity than I’d ever seen from her, “Love is not fragile. It will last till the stars burn out and the earth stills in sleep.” She let me got and returned to combing. We did not talk about my discomfort of Olórin further, just gathering up our grooming products and dirty clothes to be placed in the washing basket for tomorrow. 

The Grey Wizard was inside when we came back, seated on a stool near the hearth with Monster blinking up at him in what I’d come to know as his ‘docile face’. He made the same one after he chewed through my boots or snatched a great chunk off the lamb being roasted over the fire pit when no one was looking.

“Has he eaten your sock?” I noticed the wizard had only one drying over the fire.

He raised the bushes he used for eyebrows in my direction. “I believe he has, but for the life of me I cannot reason why,” he responded in a mild tone.

I shrugged, “It is his way, there doesn’t seem to be any particular rhyme or reason to the articles he chooses.”

“Tom does certainly have a way with beasts does he not? I have never seen a Warg tamed by any but an Orc.”

“He is neither Tom’s nor tame,” I snapped.

He leaned forward; eyes alight, “So he is yours then!”

“He is his own master,” I grumbled before plopping down in my nest to continue mending a tunic of mine when Monster decided I was to be his new seat and my affection and attention was required at that very moment. The fact that he had grown to be longer and quite a bit heavier than me, was apparently no reason for me not to drop everything and give him scratches.

“Not tame, you say?”

“A friend does not need to be tamed to be a friend.”

“No,” he said admitted, watching Monster’s head lulling against me for a time until Tom passed by whistling a hello and I responded without thinking. Olórin did not miss this exchange, but again simply puffed on his pipe and muttered to himself. He did look around the room though, and I knew what he saw.

My coat on the rack by the door, my now rarely used boots next to Goldberry’s and Tom’s, my drawing of flora and fauna on pieces of birch bark pinned around the main room, vases of wild flowers as well as Goldberry’s bowls of river water and lily pads, all so indicative of how settled I was here. I never really thought if how long I’d been with them, but it must have been a very long time, years now. I wondered how Grams was, but the ache of missing her was part of a life I hadn’t truly considered mine for some time now.

“How long have you been here?”

I shrugged and answered honestly, “I don’t know. Time moves differently here and the seasons never change in our circle of forest.”

He nodded and seemed content with that answer for now, but then asked, “Who are your people.”

“They are my kin.”

“But not by birth.”

“No.” _Nosy, aren’t you?_

I was saved from the Wizard Inquisition by Goldberry’s return and she asked if he’d like to join us in our listening; he agreed, as I feared. We sat outside, Goldberry and Tom assuming their usual spots on the wall facing away from the house and toward the sun. Olórin sat on Tom’s other side. I sat in my usual spot; a little in front of them, on a small stump I’d managed to wear down just right. But now sitting there with my back to them felt exposing. I sat frozen for about half an hour until the first tinges of red appeared on the horizon and I told myself that I would not allow anyone to take this experience from me. I focused, blocking out my anxiety at the added presence and focused on the chorus that had become as much background noise to me.

Slowly the chorus became a tangible thing, and as had become my custom, I slowly untangled all the threads of sound to identify each one. First I reached out to the sun, then Goldberry and Tom and all the familiar trees and plants around us, and then finally the newcomer. His thread was different from all others I’d felt before, but closer to Goldberry’s than Tom’s. I felt the thread with invisible fingers, fascinated by the cerulean blue sparks that engulfed his thread so unlike Tom’s bright white or Goldberry’s soft blue, and felt a warmth flood into my chest as I heard a thumping.

_Oh my god, I can hear his heartbeat!_ This had never happened before and in my shock grasped the thread and suddenly everything went white. _What in the hell?_

_“Child, how have you done this?”_

_What?_

_“Child, how are you inside my mind?”_ He didn’t sound frightened, just _highly_ curious. I panicked and pushed the music away completely, shoving me back into my own body. I stood and just started walking into the forest, feeling the prickling of his gaze on my back. Turning for just a moment, I saw in his eyes the kind of shock that would have given a mortal man a heart attack. An overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia seemed to be compressing my chest, and I fled. I took off into the trees, moving as fast and I could, and only felt like I could breath again when I breeched the treetops to gasp in the unfettered air. I watched the rest of the sunset, comforting myself with the Music of the dying sun, and finally fell asleep in the cradled branches of Yavanna’s creations.

* * * * * * 

[Survivor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iC10hKsi20)

I meant to mention to Vairë about Olórin’s arrival, but I was a little sidetracked by her sudden announcement that I had an all-new language to learn. I don’t think I’d ever sunk so low in my seat, besides maybe the time she informed me of the sheer amount of information we had to cover in our lessons on our first official session together. 

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what is it this time? Have humans come up with yet another regional dialect that unintelligible to their neighbors thirty miles in any direction? I swear to _God_ those Rohirrim had no need for a language of their own, the selfish fuckers…why are you smiling? That’s the you're-really-gonna-hate-this smile, don’t look at me like that, it’s creepy when you smile. Go back to your normal look of vague disapproval!” I slipped back into English.

“I think you will actually enjoy this one,” she stated, gliding from the room with that enviable grace.

“I highly doubt that,” I couldn’t contain the mumble as I scrapped back the high backed chair who’s cushion now had a permanent dip from my long hours in it. I trotted after her, following her behind the tapestry of Glorfindel and through a maze of turns I became bored with remaining cognizant of until she did something I’d never seen before. She pivoted, pulling me up on her left side where I’d been walking behind her on the right, and putting a hand to my back to usher me forward.

Now, her impatience with me was not unusual, if fact it was fairly common, but even in our longest treks around the halls to find some obscure tapestry for me to be sucked into had she ever broken stride to look behind and make sure I was there. She wasn’t much of a toucher either, and under difference circumstances I would have been slightly uncomfortable, but I recognized the doorway we passed from the first time I had ever been to the Halls, after passing out via creepy ass willow tree entrapment. That was the door to her weaving room…and she was rushing me past it, suddenly striking up a conversation about the book Tom had picked up for me the other day full of folk tales she confirmed were entirely untrue. I found it funny that folk tales are wrong in any world, but kept a close count on the turns we made afterwards. Vairë had never hidden anything from me before, even her own annoyance at my sass, so what could be so important that the most transparent of beings would go out of her way to lie?

My mind had gone into an overly alert state of anxiety, making me jump when she pulled me to a halt at a door with a horn carved into the wood of the door over the brass knocker. She the door several times and then with a creek it [opened to a forest](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/565694403180945824/). Not the garden, a fucking forest. I was starting to think place was a Monsters Inc. kind of scenario just with fixed door, but before I could ask she was motioning for me to go through in a much more Vairë-like manner than her previous rushing. This [forest](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700999030/) was a different one than the Old Forest that Tom so lovingly tended. This one was older and far more wild, the erratic melody so disconcerting I felt balance begin to fail and soon I had to sit down or I knew I would fall down while focusing on shutting out the Music around us.

“Loud, isn’t it?” a new voice asked, and I whipped around, still holding my head from the mounting ache forming in the sides and front of my head. If Tulkas looked like Thor, than this dude looked like Robin Hood sans the tights.

“So you’re Oromë, I guess? I’d shake your hand but I’m using them to keep my ears from bleeding,” I had to raise my voice so I could hear it over the din of life around us. He seemed unimpressed at my acerbic tone, not surprising given my near fetal position. The pressure seemed to grown stronger till I was shaking was the effort of blocking out the cacophony surrounding us when I was suddenly grabbed by the collar of my shirt and hoisted to my feet.

“Listen child, do not fight it!” he yelled so I could hear him. I could only shake my head, but he wrenched my hands from my head and shoved me by the back of my neck into facing off with a fern. The plant seemed to scream at me and I tried to put my hands back up but Oromë held them both to my sides with an arm around my torso. “Just listen to this plant, not the others. Just listen to this one…” he repeated the same mantra until all other sound had escaped my hears, and only the manic tinkling of this small plant was screeching at me. “Now let it go. Do not push it away, but let it fade of it’s own accord.” My eyes burned from the pressure but I tried to relax my muscles, focusing on the feeling of my tense back loosening and my jaw unclenching and slowly, much to my annoyance, he was correct and the tinny sound faded to barely a whisper. Abruptly he let go and I collapsed into the dirt, hearing my heartbeat and breath moving at a near identical gallop. So attuned to my own heart, I nearly missed a faint keening. My eyes refused to open for a moment, so crusted with tears, but when they finally cracked open it was not to immediately focus through the faint cloud of dirt dust in the air and on the mentor and Vala who had made me feel secure and loved in her own peculiar way.

Vairë was strong, sometimes to a callus degree, with a tongue that could cut anyone down to size and a mind that contained all the knowledge of several thousand years worth of information and who knows what else. Here was the woman who had validated my mind in a way it had never been before, the woman who had told me I had a knack for new accents, fueled my previously unknown love of fiction novels, and called me sister when I had lost everything. My guide in this new life I led sat crumpled in a heap by the doorframe; hands clamped to her mouth to muffle the sobs she couldn’t keep in as she watched me through tears. I would have called to her if I’d had the energy, my tired mind not understand why she wept. I flinched as another came into my view, the man dressed in green, blocking my view of her.

“Get up,” came the gruff voice of the man whose face seemed cut from stone, “get up and defend her.” He drew a sword and swung it to point directly at her chest and I lurched up on instinct, grabbing at his legs before being kicked away. Panic rising, I scrabbled around for something to fight with but when I turned he had begun advancing on me instead. I couldn’t help the shaky laugh that escaped my throat; pleased he’d been distracted and she could run. I crawled on my belly like one of Melkor’s dragons, trying to find something, anything to fight with but there was nothing but more ferns and I found myself using them as hand holds to pull myself along the forest floor and away from the death I knew was advancing on me from behind. My legs had completely stopped working now but I realized this reaper in green was speaking to me, repeating over and over that I was to get up and defend her. _Doesn’t he know I can’t feel my body?_ I fought to move forward till I couldn’t any longer and in a final fit of rage I tore the nearest flower from its roots thinking perhaps I could chuck it at him, if it hit him in the face at least I’d die with a smile on my face, but when I tore it up everything stilled with a death cry. Not mine and not that of my tormentor, but the little [purple](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532701009008/) flower’s music chocked off in the moment and suddenly I felt its small death rattle vibrate up my arm and into my bones. The wave of pain from the little being echoed my own and I liked it, that little knowledge that something else was in as much pain as I was. I [turned](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700588815/) and looked at the advancing stranger, this Oromë who I’d so looked forward to meeting and I screamed. I poured my rage and hurt and disappointment into that scream and my cry sent him back on his own ass in a shower of [burnt gold sparks](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700983035/).

We sat that way, mirror images of each other staring at each other; my face tear and blood caked while his was perfectly clean with only vague singe marks on his jerkin’s collar and gold flecks I his blue black hair, an unreadable expression in his eyes. Vairë came running up the rocky hill I had no recollection of crawling, panting and sweating and almost as tear stained as me.

“Oh thank Eru. Oh thank the Father, I thought you were going to kill her! What is wrong with you?” she managed through panting breaths.

“I was,” he droned, sounding bored about the whole experience.

“You…you _what_?” I almost laughed.

“She passed,” he made no further comment as he stood and shook off the golden ash still left on him. He turned to me, dispassionate as ever, and said, “you shall return here tomorrow,” and he left.

Still seated where I had blown him back, I could barely think or move, but I knew I would remember what had happened here today for the rest of time. Vairë sat silently with big eyes, watching me try to become verbal again. I kept thinking about that golden dust and raised my hands despite my protesting muscles to see them coating in a deep [golden dust](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700931030/), the flower had wilted in my hand as though it had been pulled days ago, blackened petals and a fine layer of the same golden ash.

I sat there for a very long time before [wordlessly](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700891252/) pulling myself inch by inch to my feet and starting the trip back to the door to the Halls. Vairë shadowed me, seemingly unsure of what to say so she didn’t say anything at all. I knew she hadn’t meant to put me in harms way necessarily, but she still hadn’t defended me. She offered no apologies or excuses, however, for which I was grateful. Moving at my snail’s pace, we finally made it back to the Halls and out of those accursed woods for me a take breather once the door was closed and the low din of hysterical life was gone completely.

I kept walking the halls, shuffling my poor abused feet forward, Vairë trailing behind, till the tingling feeling called me back to wakefulness. I woke in my tree [branch crook](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/284430532700982443/), a little sore but just from sleeping on bark and not from nearly dying, and planed how to find that weaving room again while listening to the Music I’d never considered could be anything but beautiful. I had been so wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello beautiful people! Sorry I've been AWOL for a while, school's been insane and end of term is quickly approaching. This chapter has been giving me quite a bit of trouble for a while and I was procrastinating figuring out which of the multiple versions I'd be going with since they all would have taken the story to our ultimate destination quite differently, but I really like where we're going with this. I've linked some Pinterest images to give you guys some context for the imagery I'm using as inspiration including the tracks I've used while writing this to get me in the right mood. I think I'll be doing something similar to all previous chapters as well, if only to empty my story board slightly.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are very much appreciated! :)


	11. Glitter and Be Gay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey people! This is a short one but Happy Reading!

I lay in my tree-limbed bed and inspected my fingers. The golden sparks were gone but the fierce heat that had rushed through me was still there, boiling under the surface. It was anger, but a kind I’d never felt before; a rage so filled with indignation and betrayal I wished I could cry. There was too much anger for me to do anything and it just pulsed under my skin, prickling my extremities and crackling in my ears. I knew it wanted to escape me, but I couldn’t focus it like before.

It was in that pain-fueled daze that I could only ask _why_. Why was all this happening to me? I’d accepted that I had been chosen, but that near-deadly test had solidified in my mind that there was always a question of my success. _What would Grams say?_ She had always looked for the silver lining… _Grams…_

When was the last time I’d thought of her? I couldn’t remember what she looked like. _How do you forget the face of the woman who raised you?_ The proud woman who had arranged for her daughter and son-in-law’s funeral while caring for me at barely a year-old, who’d loved me despite my constant fighting through school and the terrible string of men I brought into our lives and still visited me every week when I was in county juvie for yet another petty theft with a stern mouth but kind eyes had been all but forgotten. I couldn’t even remember her smile. And suddenly I was forced to confront the little nagging question that had been in my mind since the beginning.

 _How long have I been here?_  

The more I thought about everything that had happened since my arrival in Middle Earth, the less made sense. I’d been kidnapped to a strange land but had never bothered to question where it was? I’d been told I was the Chosen One but never asked for what? Countless lessons with Vairë and I never asked her how I’d been transported here or why it was only a one-way trip?

I felt a twinge at the thought of my mentor. The more upset I became though, the more aware I became of how difficult it was to hang on to my thoughts, like water through a sieve. Something was wrong. Something felt so very wrong. _I have to get out._

I ran through the trees, not even stopping to check that I wasn’t being pursed; a feeling of crushing claustrophobia creeping up my spine and making it hard to take in air. I kept running at breakneck speed, pitching myself through the canopy towards the forest floor and then west till I broke through the tree line for the first time and sucked in what felt like my first breath in a lifetime. I didn’t stop running till the edge of the field and I was faced with a large river. I stopped, gulping in as much air as possible and then dunking my head into the cool water and letting my foggy head clear. I knew had to be the Baranduin, the only river west of the Old Forest, so that placed me on the eastern most border of The Shire, somewhere in Buckland. On the opposite side of the river would be the majority of the Hobbit community with only a small contingent here on the eastern shore.

I dunked my head again and laid back in the grass, basking in the first direct sunlight to hit my skin since I’d left the Old World, not filtered through treetops or the dreamy haze of Yavanna’s Pastures, just direct shining rays of sun. It was more difficult for me to hear the Music now, but somehow the raging itch under my skin had only slightly ebbed. I could momentarily forget about it, but the prickling would always return. I sighed loudly, scrubbing at my eyes and wondering if I was destined to be uncomfortable for the rest of time when I noticed a cloud of golden dust motes floating down around me. I felt a little better, a little less strained. I sighed again, louder this time, and the motes flew from my lips like a seeding dandy lion in the wind. Huffed laughs send even more, and as the near-painful tingling stopped the heat turned to an easy flowing under my skin that felt…awake. Powerful but malleable. This was a current I could do something with.

Pointing at a nearby blade of grass I said, “grow!” Nothing happened except a little stuttering of the power flow toward my hand and into my finger. _It feels like I’m holding a gun with the safety on._ Focusing all my energy into the blade of grass I ordered it again, “grow!” It exploded in a shower of golden ash. _Well fuck._ I moved around the field accidentally blowing up little blades of grass in clouds of glitter until I had no choice but to sit down in frustration and exhaustion. I needed a plan but my mind was still too hazy to think properly.

A little flower bud in front of me seemed to wave at me, bopping in the breeze. The small tinkle of the Music to reach my ears and I suddenly felt a rushing in my head.

On instinct, I said said, “ _bloom_.” It did.

 _Holy fucking shit yes!_ I danced around the little flower, picking up one of its already bloomed brethren and jumping around laughing wildly. The current of power under my skin rippled along in joy as well. I felt awake; for the first time in a long time I was properly alive. 

* * * * * *

Washing my ash-stained fingers proved to be a more difficult chore than scrubbing out greasy dinner pots and eventually I just gave up. The autumn sun didn’t dry me completely as I lay on my jacket in the grass, but it would have to do. The sun was halfway across the sky and I knew I needed to decide what came next.

Traveling without supplies wasn’t really an option, but the nearest human establishment was on the other side of the forest, which would take days to go around either way. I could cross the river and bother some Hobbits for food and shelter, but the Halflings wouldn’t have clothes that could fit me and they weren’t known for being particularly good with outsiders anyway. I didn’t have any coins or things of value that I could trade either, so I’d definitely receive little help there. I’d have to steal something, but it had been a while since I’d tried any slight of hand or deception. _I really am out of practice._ There was nowhere else within a few days journey that could be of any help except by going back into the Old Forest, which was definitely not an option.

* * * * * *

Stepping back into the shadow of the Old Forest send a shiver up my spine so hard I thought my teeth would rattle. I stepped closer putting my hand into the shadow of the trees and immediately felt that same numbing feeling. _I should just curl up and wait for Goldberry and Tom to find me…_ Wrenching my hand out of the shadows was a harder task than I could have imagined.

I tramped through the tall grass back to the riverbed and began picking my way along the rocks, looking for bushes or some familiar looking plant I knew were edible. I had found nothing I could safely say wouldn’t poison me by the time I made it all the way to what a small sign in neat letters pronounced to be Bucklebury Ferry. The ferry however, was on the other side and no one was on the side to be waved over. I didn’t have any money to pay them with either, so I started considering finding a nearby house to steal some money or tradable goods from. Before I had the chance to trudge past through the grass that was quickly become marshland, a small figure appeared on the other side of the quarter league of placid river. The ferryman’s door swung open and out came who I imagined to be the proprietor to greet the visitor and after exchanging what looked like pleasantries they both boarded the little floating pallet.

It suddenly occurred to me, I didn’t know how good of an idea it was to be seen. Even on all fours down in the grasses I was too close for them not to see me once the reached the other side, but the squelching of my feet and now hands in the runny mud was louder than the water and crickets chirping. I slowly extricated myself from the mud and onto the dirt of the side of road, still hidden by reeds and rushes. If I waited till they made it over and the traveler passed by, hopefully I could knock out the ferryman and take whatever money he had on him. One passage’s fare wouldn’t set him back too much and I’d save him from having to row the float al the way back across the river. I peaked over, hoping to judge how much longer they’d be and their approximate size, but instead I wound up making direct eye contact with the cloaked traveler just stepping off the ferry. I skittered backwards in surprise, falling ass first into the road but quickly fumbling into a sprint toward the trees. It would be much worse for them to see my face and report back to Olórin that they’d seen a redheaded woman running around without shoes or a jacket.

My clamoring was undoubtedly loud enough to follow but I didn’t slow down, shredding my palms in my haste to get as high up a nearby tree as possible. My climbing was cut short when I heard the crunch of light feet beneath the tree I was in. I froze, gripping the trunk in vice-like arms and legs, barely any weight on the tree limbs around me in case they would creak, and hoping against hope that I was far enough up in the foliage to go unseen. Of course none of that could stop the blob of mud that chose that moment to slide from the top of my foot to the otherwise clear ground with a loud slap. My inaudibly whispered curses released more golden dust.

“It’s okay! I won’t hurt you,” a small, high voice said from bellow. I didn’t move, muscles locked and tensed beyond pain as I silently begged for the Hobbit to lose interest, but evidently luck wasn’t on my side that day as they proceeded to call the ferryman over and they began speaking below me in hushed tones. Groaning in dread, I readjusted my grip to forgo my plan of waiting them out and try to escape further up into the trees when I realized I had managed to cover my hands in black goo, as if I wasn’t dirty enough. Wiping it off I started climbing before noticing the sap was everywhere up along my arms, flashing gold in the sun. It was oozing from a cut on my arm. _What the fuck?_ I checked every scratch I could find and they were all the same, golden-sheened black blood that smelled like raw copper.

A scuffling below reminded me I had more pressing issues than my altered anatomy. The bargeman’s conversation with the passenger had turned into more of an argument.

The sharp cry of, “don’t!” and a whistling were the only warning I received before a sharp smack on the back of my head send me careening toward the earth.

* * * * * *

The floating of dreamless sleep was a feeling I’d grown very accustomed to by now, but the few seconds of limbo before being pulled into the Halls of Mandos didn’t end; I just continued floating in total sensory deprivation till a prickle of pain at the base of my neck woke me from my stupor. _Am I dead?_ No, then I’d be in the Halls as a spirit awaiting judgment. Instead I just _was_.

I felt out with my mind for something, anything and was rewarded with vague familiarity. I stretched out farther towards it and found myself moving at my own whim. _Finally, I get to do something under my own power._ Cautiously, I drew closer, hedging my way around other, far colder things and made my way toward my unknown destination. Slowly pulling through the molasses of the veil I touched down in what I could only assume was a corridor of the Halls I’d never seen before. _I go exploring for the first time and I wind up in the same place I’ve been everyday since I first arrived. Typical._

Aware this may be my own time with the advantage of surprise, I stopped just shy of fully materializing. Vairë had always been able to find me when I arrived in the Halls almost immediately, and I hoped this would put her off my trail for a while until I could find her weaving room.

I hurried on my ghost-like feet down corridor after corridor looking for the tapestries I knew hung on either side of the door when I heard voices. I couldn’t tell which branch of the hall they came from so I kept moving cautiously to the right before realizing I had chosen wrong. The voices were right on top of me and I panicked, skipping back in the opposite direction, turning the corner to take the left side branch of the hallway and froze, plastering myself to the side of the wall behind a giant, and thankfully floor-length depiction of King Eärnur of Gondor’s murder at Minas Morgul. As the voices drew closer I recognized one.

“Nienna has called to Olórin again, but so far he has not found her,” Vairë’s voice was low and colorless.

“Everything will be fine, my love. When she is returned to us, we shall simply explain it was all a misunderstanding.” Even consoling his spouse, the booming voice of Námo was unmistakable. _No wonder he’s called the Proclaimer, for fuck’s sake._

“You didn’t see her face,” Vairë argued softly, “She was empty. The light in her eyes went out. I’ve failed and now all Arda will suffer for it.” Námo tutted and continued making pacifying comments as they walked off, leaving me alone in the Hall for several more moments. I felt only a petty glee as her emotional state.

Backtracking down the hallway they’d come from was easy, but figuring out what turn to take next was more difficult. Had they walking towards or away from her weaving room? Or perhaps they were doing neither; they did live here after all. I found several doors leading to a study, another to a second library Vairë had taken me to before, and the last door was to their bedroom. _It’s more likely they just came from doing the nasty rather than weaving the histories of Arda into pictograph form._

Several more minutes of searching hallways however led me to a tapestry I absolutely had seen before. Grinning wolfishly, I picked up my pace and rounded the corner to press my ear to the wooden door. If she was already in there, I couldn’t tell; I couldn’t hear the clicking of any machines or voices inside, so I cautiously pushed at the thankful well-oiled door. At first all I could see was the same as what had been there my first and only other visit to the room, six neatly spaced looms on either wall. Each one had clothes in various states of creation; some nearly completed, while others were just beginning to form a distinguishable pattern. The histories being woven seemed so dark that it was difficult to look too closely. Knowing it was the not so distant past, maybe still current, made it all the more horrifying. A click behind me made me jump and whirl around as a machine starting moving on its own, picking up work on a tableau of a dragon perched on a mountain, raining down fire on running civilians. The mute terror on their faces so alive it completely distracted me from the magically self-running loom.

The pure fear and despair on the faces of the small running Dwarves as they sprinted to defend their home may have been still, but it was very real somewhere and must have been happening in real time. _Vairë may be coming back to check on it any moment._

I jumped into action. I searched every picture for any detail that might pertain to me, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. The arras on the last loom on the left seemed to be the only one having anything to do with me, and it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. The same image of me as before, but now expanded to show my life of studying or running through the forest with Tom and Monster till Oromë tried to kill me and me taking off into the marshes. It didn’t even show me being run up that tree. More than a bit annoyed, I started looking behind the machines to see if anything had been dropped when I realized there was a pile of tapestries under the machine with mine, folded neatly and labeled with numbers; one through ten and dated.

Pulling one out I found a young man whose first three panels looked exactly like mine. I checked again, but it was true. Everything matched up until Orcs cornered him two days after meeting Vairë and stabbed him through the heart. I checked the next one: a brown haired woman waking up as I did, but she was eaten by a large spider her first night alone, her terror seeming to pull at the strands of fabric. I pulled out another; this one was a dark skinned woman waking up in a city, living a normal human existence by day and learning with Vairë by night. She avoided several giants that tried to eat her, but years later she couldn’t escape from a group of men from Dunland and flung herself off a cliff rather than be caught and raped. And there was another and then another, all of them different and all of them dead.

Wiping my tears on my sleeve, I gathered up these precious lives in a bundle under my arm and turned to make a dash for the door when I heard multiple pairs of footsteps coming down the hall. A sharp gust of wind stirred up from behind me, making me turn.

“Come!” Yavanna whispered urgently from a hole in the wall that had not been there a moment before. I hesitated for only a second before picking the lesser of two evils and raced through the glowing doorway and into the most beautiful light I had ever seen.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: Hey guys! I've finally figured out more or less where I'm going with this fic (thank the LORD) but it's led to a bit of rearranging in the first few chapters. Also I know that Tolkien has his own calendar for Middle Earth and even within that there are slightly different versions (Shire Reckoning, etc.) but for the sake of my sanity I'm going to be using the LoTR Project's maps and timeline:  
> http://lotrproject.com/timedistance/


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